Category: What Comes Next

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Mailbag: June 20, 2016

Welcome back to the HW Mailbag.  I apologize for my absence.  I forgot to put out a call for questions last week.  I’m sure all 6 of you who read this were crushed.

We’ve got two questions today, both from former writers from the site.  They’re lovely people.  If you’re not following them on Twitter, you should probably fix that as soon as possible.

To the questions!

Brother, what is a scene that absolutely wrecked you?  Either emotionally or the violent nature was more than you could take? – @lcfremont

I’d like to thank my horror sister for taking me down some dark paths.  I reached down deep to remember those moments I took great pains to bury deep.  Thanks Lisa!

I’ve got a few that spring to mind.  The first one I always think of is the ending of the original Night of the Living Dead.  Seeing as how the movie came out in 1968 and this is a horror site, I assume everyone has seen it.  But, if you haven’t and you have not yet had it spoiled for you, don’t let me be the person who does it.  I’mma throw a little SPOILER ALERT here for ya.

notld - ending

We make it through the entire movie with Ben, only to watch him – the lone survivor – get shot in the head and thrown on a bonfire.  That ending absolutely gutted me.  I remember watching it for the first time and just staring at the screen, unable to move.  I stood up and just kind of stumbled around for a while.  When I think of movies that emotionally wrecked me, Night of the Living Dead is at the top of the list.
END SPOILER

The scene in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer where Henry and Otis calmly watch a video of a family they terrorized and killed earlier.  That scene made me ill.
The end of that movie was pretty gut-punchy, in a weird way.

henry - on couch

Martyrs.  Pretty much everything in Martyrs.  It’s such a beautiful movie and it absolutely destroyed me for days.  It’s so good (SO GOOD), but it’s unlikely I’ll ever watch it again.  (I’m speaking to the original.  I haven’t seen the American remake yet.)

martyrs - lucie

Since we’re on the topic of French horror, let’s throw Inside into the mix.  That movie messed me up, man. Now that I have a child myself, I don’t know that I would be able to watch it again. It’s kind of the same thing as Martyrs: I could name a scene that really wrecked me, but the majority of the movie had that effect on me.  To name one or two would be to ignore the others. It’s a great movie that everyone should see, but man…

inside

As far as those of “violent nature,” I have a few things that get me.  Anything involving fingernails, teeth or eyes is no fun.  Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is not a great movie, but I will always remember the beginning, when a man chisels out his own teeth.  Just takes a hammer a chisel to them.  That’s what I see when I try to sleep at night.
One of the other big ones is rape.  I don’t feel like I need to explain this too much.  It’s just…ugly.  Lisa has watched a lot of rape revenge movies, so she can probably speak on this more than I can, but I find that a lot of movies with rape tend to linger a bit too long on the scene.  I’ve never seen a rape scene that didn’t make me want to turn off the TV and just do something else for a while.  Maybe that’s the point.

I can watch a man take a machete to the face and not even flinch.  Stick a nailgun to someone’s temple.  Take out someone’s knee with a shotgun.  But shove toothpicks under fingernails and I’m useless for a day.

Manhunter or Red Dragon, which is the better film? – @Foxxy_Gilley

It has been a long time since I’ve seen either one of these.  I’ll say that I liked Red Dragon better, but that may be because Ed Norton and Ralph Fiennes absolutely crushed those roles.  Also, I watched Red Dragon before Manhunter, so that may have something to do with it..  You can’t really go wrong with either one, though.

Have something on your mind?  Send us your questions!  Hit us up on Twitter or through email.

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Mailbag: June 6, 2016

Welcome back to the HW Mailbag.  Only one question this week, but it’s a good one.

Current debate that’s going on at work…What’s scarier, ghosts/paranormal or slashers/killers and why?  Your thoughts? – @kcguru23

@kcguru23 works at a hotel and they have these debates during slow moments.  I wouldn’t mind working in a place like that.  Instead, I’ll just sit alone in my office, telling ghost stories to myself.  As it turns out, my scenario is still more interesting than The Innkeepers.

This question comes down to personal preference/beliefs.  I consider myself a believer in the paranormal, with a healthy helping of skepticism.  That is to say that I believe in ghosts, but, I don’t think they’re as prevalent as the wide array of ghost hunting shows would have us believe.

I also believe that there are malevolent spirits.  I’ve heard enough stories from people who have visited Waverly Hills Sanatorium if nothing else.

Still, ghosts/paranormal movies have never really scared me.  Those kinds of movies can be creepy, but they never really stick with me.  Recent installments in this genre seem more intent on hitting the viewer with jump scares more than anything else.  If there’s anything that screams “fleeting scares” more than movies crawling with jump scares, I don’t know about it.  There is such a thing as a well-done jump scare (the sheet flying off the clothesline in The Conjuring is a recent example), but far too many of them just seem cheap and lazy.

conjuring-sheet
That’s not to say that all paranormal movies are bad, I just tend not to find them very frightening.

So, for this debate, I’ll side with slashers/killers.  I grant you that most things I just said about paranormal movies tend to hold true for slashers: they’re not very scary and like to rely on jump scares.  More recent movies like the “fake jump scare” jump scare, which I’m not a big fan of.

I’m siding with this because well-done movies about killers tend to get under my skin.  When I think of some of the most unnverving movies I’ve ever seen – the ones that really grabbed hold of me and left me looking over my shoulder for weeks – I think of movies about serial killers.  The Poughkeepsie Tapes.  Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.  Even Zodiac to some degree, and that wasn’t even really that scary.

It’s something real.  Something I feel could actually happen to me.  I don’t necessarily expect a killer will be hiding in my garage, but I could always be wrong.  On the other side, I’ve been living in the same house for almost 10 years and have witnessed exactly zero paranormal events.  No violent deaths have occurred here, and it’s not built on an old burial ground.  I have no fear of ghosts in my day-to-day life.  But killers could be anywhere, man.  Just waiting to strike.  Maybe one of them has been living in my attic for a couple months, just hanging out until the time is right.  I’ll never know until it’s too late, which is why I have various weapons stashed in random places in my house.  YOU HEAR THAT KILLER IN THE ATTIC?  I have weapons that you don’t know about, and they’re EVERYWHERE.  I may not have much training, but I can swing wildly with the best of them.  Find another filthy attic to call your home.

The concept of the home invasion subgenre scares me, but I’ve yet to come across one that has really stuck with me.  The first 45 minutes of The Strangers was pretty cool, but it all just kind of fell apart.  I recently watched Hush – which I really liked – but it didn’t really affect me.  The idea that someone could randomly break into my house and torture/kill me is terrifying, but I’ve yet to see a movie that has really been able to harness that terror.

A quick story about serial killer movies.
As we all know, Zodiac was based on a true story.  The Zodiac Killer was an actual killer who was never caught.  Still, the murders took place in California in the late 60s.  After watching Zodiac – again, not really a scary movie – I checked my garage to make sure he wasn’t hiding out in there.
To repeat: I checked my garage to see if The Zodiac Killer – a man who, if still alive, would likely be well into his seventies – was hiding in there.  I live in Kentucky and have a very loud garage door.  There is no reason he would be in there, but I just had to check.

zodiac
A view from my garage

In closing, I’ll roll with slashers/killers over ghosts/paranormal, and it’s not particularly close.

Have something on your mind?  Send us your questions!  Hit us up on Twitter or through email.

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Horror School is in Session

As I mentioned in the not-so-distant past, I am a relatively recent horror convert.  Because of this, I have fairly sizable holes in my viewing history.  I haven’t seen a lot of movies that a lot of people hold up as classics.  In a perfect world I would have found all sorts of time to just sit down and give myself a proper horror upbringing.  But it is not a perfect world.

So I have decided to enroll in Horror School.  I am counting on you, the reader, to supply me with horror movies that are absolutely essential viewing.  I’ll put them on a list, watch them when I can and put up some thoughts.  Along the way, I’m planning on throwing in some words on horror classics that I have already seen.  I’d love to use this to create a list that highlights the absolute best of horror cinema.

I don’t know how often these will be going up.  I’m hoping for at least one Horror School post every month.  I’ll be starting tomorrow with the slasher classic Chopping Mall.

Please send along your suggestions.  You can send them along via Twitter, email or leave them in the comments.

Sound the bell.  School is in, suckers.

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Boo! John Carpenter Returns to the Halloween Franchise

Boo! John Carpenter Returns to Halloween Franchise!

In case you missed it, Blumhouse has announced that they have brought John Carpenter back into the Halloween franchise.  He will be producing the next installment in the series, set to release in October 2017.

I do not like this.

As you all well know, Carpenter is the man responsible for first bringing Michael Myers into our world back in 1978, effectively giving birth to the slasher boom of the 80s.  Even after all these years, Halloween is just as good today as it was when it was released (I assume, anyway: I was -2 at the time of its release).  It looks amazing, the acting is incredible and it features one of the best theme songs in horror history.

Carpenter wrote and produced Halloween II (one of the best horror sequels ever made) and produced Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  He had success outside this series as well, with an insane filmography that includes The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, Prince of Darkness, They Live and In the Mouth of Madness, to name a few.

His recent history, however, has not been so kind.  The last three movies he directed were Vampires (1998), Ghosts of Mars (2001) and The Ward (2010).  The Rotten Tomatoes scores for those are 37%, 21% and 32%, respectively.  Rotten Tomatoes scores are nothing compared to the losses these racked up.  Vampires brought in $20.3 million on a budget of $20 million.  Ghosts of Mars brought in $14 million on a budget of $28 million.  The Ward brought in $1.2 million on a budget of $10 million.

For the record, I didn’t hate any of those movies, but I wouldn’t call a single one of those a good movie.  They are terrible movies, but they’re bad enough that I can laugh at them.

But he’s not directing this new Halloween movie, so let’s throw those out the window.  Get outta here, Ghosts of Mars.  He’s merely producing this movie.  So let’s look at the last two movies he produced.

Uh…
Vampires: Los Muertos and The Fog.  Yeeeesh.
Vampires: Los Muertos is best known for starring Jon Bon Jovi, Darius McCrary and Natasha Gregson Wagner.  Rotten Tomatoes has this at 20%.  I can’t find budget/box office numbers.
The Fog is a remake of Carpenter’s classic.  It stars Maggie Grace, Selma Blair and some other random people.  Rotten Tomatoes has this at 4%.  It brought in $46.2 million on a budget of $18 million, so it did pretty well there.  However, as the Rotten Tomatoes score shows, this was not a good movie.

Due to circumstances I don’t care to explain, I have seen each of these movies no less than 4 times each.  I have problems.  I know it.
Again, like Vampires, Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, I don’t hate these movies, but they are not good movies.  These are both very bad movies.  They just happen to be bad in a way that I can laugh at them.

That’s not what I want for a new Halloween film.  I don’t want a Halloween movie that is so bad it’s funny.  They tried that with Resurrection, but they tried to actually make it funny and failed miserably.  MISERABLY.  I hate that movie so much.

A producer could be anything.  Carpenter could just be put in the role as a figurehead: a way to drum up press and get people talking.  When work starts on the movie, Carpenter could be a thousand miles away, with absolutely no involvement.  He could just as easily be in some kind of on-set consultant role.  Whichever way it goes, it doesn’t guarantee the movie is going to be good just because his name is slapped on it.  This could just as easily turn into The Fog remake all over again.

Carpenter stepped away from movies after 2001’s Ghosts of Mars because he felt “burned out.”  I doubt his experience with The Ward lit any fire underneath him.  He has released two stellar albums (Lost Themes and Lost Themes II), but nothing in regards to film.  I love John Carpenter.  He has done wonders for the horror genre, but I think it’s time for him to finally fade into the cinematic sunset.

This movie could be good, but Carpenter won’t likely have much to do with it.  Call me when a writer/director is announced.

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Yay! John Carpenter Returns to Halloween Franchise!

In case you missed it, Blumhouse has announced that they have brought John Carpenter back to the Halloween franchise.  He will be producing the next installment in the series, set to release in October 2017.

I love this.

As you all well know, Carpenter is the man responsible for first bringing Michael Myers into our world back in 1978, effectively giving birth to the slasher boom of the 80s.  Even after all these years, Halloween is just as good today as it was when it was released (I assume, anyway: I was -2 at the time of its release).  It looks amazing, the acting is incredible and it features one of the best theme songs in horror history.

Carpenter wrote and produced Halloween II (one of the best horror sequels ever made) and produced Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  He had success outside this series as well, with an insane filmography that includes The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, Prince of Darkness, They Live and In the Mouth of Madness, to name a few.

Meanwhile, Rob Zombie’s Halloween series has slowly withered and died.  They didn’t do terribly in the box office (Halloween II brought in $39.3 million on a budget of $15 million), but interest waned with each passing year since the release of Halloween II in 2009.  All we had were rumors.  Zombie is coming back.  No he isn’t.  Scout Taylor-Compton is coming back.  No she isn’t.  The script has been written.  There is no script.  The movie is a go.  It’s not.  It is.  It’s not.  And on it went, until Dimension finally lost the rights.

I didn’t hate Zombie’s Halloween series.  I think saying that I “enjoyed” them might be a bit much, but I liked them both.  I didn’t really care about Myers’ childhood, but, for the most part I thought the first movie was a perfectly fine slasher movie.  The second one wasn’t as good, but I found it the more interesting movie of the two.  It mainly dealt with the fallout from the events of Halloween, and attempted to answer the question of what happens to a person after they experience such intense psychological trauma.  It’s not all sunshine and roses after the credits end; there’s pain and suffering and fear, and those feelings can completely reshape who a person is.  It wasn’t necessarily handled with the nuance it deserved, but it at least took on that subject.  (This is the movie that inspired my short-lived What Comes Next series.)

Still, it felt like Zombie’s Halloween had run its course.  It was time to bring the series back to basics.  And if anyone could do that, it would be John Carpenter.

I think the world is finally ready for another Halloween movie.  It’s hard to shock audiences nowadays, especially with a silent, masked killer.  But Halloween doesn’t need to shock.  It needs some tension.  It needs Michael Myers lurking in the shadows and a synth chord ready to hit at the best possible moment.  We all knew Michael Myers wasn’t gone forever.  He was always going to come back.  Who better to take the reins than Carpenter?  And in the month of October, no less.

I’m fully on board.