Being Film #5 for Hooptober 2022 After my positive experience with X, I decided to travel back to the beginning and take another look at The House of the Devil, West’s first feature from 2009. I probably hadn’t see the film since about that time, and although the years have certainly been kinder, my initial criticisms are still there. The movie certainly captures the look, … Continue reading Hooptober 9.0 – The House of the Devil (2009)
Being Film #29 for Hooptober 2021
Back when I was a teenager there were these things called video stores. But I didn’t live in the most urban of areas so instead we would rent our VHS tapes from pharmacies and gas stations. Sometimes these places didn’t have the most popular movies, especially in the horror genre so I would up finding a lot of shoe-string budget films that took advantage of videotape as a cheap alternative to film. These films weren’t too good, and that trend seems to have continued into the digital age with Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman, which looks like a slightly higher res version of those dumpster films. With a title like that I think you can guess what this film is about and, more importantly, how it goes about it. Cheap, silly, a few laughs…but there’s only so far you can go with a wise cracking killer snowman – although every time I see a crawling talking carrot the movie bumps up a minute.
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Being Film #24 for Hooptober 2021
There really is nothing like a Sion Sono film. It’s too easy to slip the “gonzo” tag onto any artist whose work straddles the line of garrish cartoons and meta commentary, over the top gore covering everything like…well, gore. The fact that Suicide Club still hasn’t been upgraded to HD (at least streaming, which is how I saw it) makes in a strange way for an even more effective presentation, as if I’m watching something that maybe I shouldn’t. The film that broke Sono to wider audiences is still just as weird, wild, and ultimately mysterious as it was when it was first released over twenty years ago.
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Being Film #17 for Hooptober 2021
For a director with some many bonafide horror classics under his belt, including one of the greatest horror films of all time, Tobe Hooper got a bit of a bad break. By the time the 90s arrived he was relegated to smaller and smaller films with little opportunity to stretch his weird wings. So it’s a nice surprise that Mortuary isn’t terrible at all: it’s a fun, schlocky spook-fest sprinkled with some of his signature freaky moments that the low DTV budget and pitchy performances can’t completely diminish.
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Being Film #12 for Hooptober 2021
Another day, another horror debut from someone who went on to bigger and better things. This time it’s writer/director Christopher Smith, whose Triangle was a sweet little mindf–k of a film I need to revisit. Despite a game cast in Franka Potente Sean Harris, Creep (not to be confused with the 2014 found footage film) features a few gnarly moments but not a whole lot else to drive a recommendation. It does what it needs to do, but without giving you much in the way of any character investment. When practically no one is likable in your horror film, that’s a bit of a problem.
Continue reading “Hooptober 8.0 – Creep (2004)”
Being Film #11 for Hooptober 2021
It’s a super low-budget reworking of a zombie idea by two film students that is about plague carrying rats that infect the city and turn people into ravenous were-rats that’s also a commentary of gentrification. Sound good? What if I told you those two students were Jim Mickle and Nick Damici, and the resulting debut, Mulberry Street, is not only a visceral and frightening film, but evokes the same kind of social horror that was an earmark of Romero, and also a great showcase for the work the pair would move onto later like Stakeland, We Are What We Are, and Cold in July?
Because yeah…I’m saying that.
Continue reading “Hooptober 8.0 – Mulberry Street (2006)”
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