It’s a bit late in the year for me to be writing this (due to the film in question being a holiday film), but you’ve heard of Christmas in July, have you not? It’s approaching and so, with that, I would like to talk about the film Krampus, while I am listening to the Jailbreak album by Thin Lizzy.
Before I get started, I need to state that I haven’t seen Krampus since it was out in theaters, but I bought it today for $11.99 and decided to write about it despite not having watched it. I am sure will make for a very interesting, yet fun read. So here we go…
Krampus, the 2015 film directed by Michael Dougherty (Trick r Treat) is a Christmas themed horror/comedy film and not a straight-to-DVD film that you would have found back in November (I’m looking at you Krampus: The Reckoning). Krampus stars some familiar faces, such as the guy from Parks and Rec (Adam Scott), the bald man that shouts “whammy” in anchor man (David Koechner), the grumpy maid from Two And a Half Men (Conchata Ferrell), and the kid from Jumanji (you’ll get it once you watch the film) as they attempt to survive Christmas Eve as Krampus does mean, Krampusy things.
For me this film played out perfectly. It was one of the best films that I have seen in theaters in the past year. However, if I’m not mistaken, it had gotten mixed reviews from people who were pissed that it wasn’t “scary enough” or that it wasn’t “funny enough.” It’s a damn Christmas movie, you morons. There needs to be a balance somewhere between “scary” and “funny,” and Krampus found that middle ground perfectly. It played out like Gremlins in a lot of ways; if you’re a kid, it will probably give you nightmares, but as an adult you can chuckle at it.
I absolutely love the dry humor in it. I’m not sure if that’s the proper phrase but when something comedic plays out, it isn’t thrown in your face like it is in Adam Sandler movies. This felt more like Ghostbusters humor.
Really, at this point in writing, I’m certain that I’ve covered enough about Krampus. What’s my pitch to go see it? This terrible write up about it? Yeah boooooiiii, you better believe it. Despite it being a bit late in the year, go out and grab a copy and save it for the holiday season. But this review is a Horror-Writers exclusive. CHRISTMAS IN JULY, before any other horror website could start posting about holiday movies to check out, we did it.
Now on another, slightly more important topic: can we discuss how the worlds governments are being run by a race of reptilian humanoids?
Synopsis:
Authorities find over 800 VHS tapes made by an elusive killer in and around Poughkeepsie, New York. We the viewer – most of whom are absolutely not police or FBI agents – get to watch some of these and see what terrible things this killer did. Awful things. Twisted things. Why did they let us watch these?
My thoughts:
This wasn’t as much out-and-out scary as it was supremely unnerving. I had to keep telling myself, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real.” I believed myself for the most part, but a little part of me knew that I’m not a smart person and was probably lying.
This movie is 86 minutes long. There is a whole lot of life-scarring material in this movie for it being so short. There are things in this movie I will carry with me for years. Maybe the rest of my life. I may pass those things down to my children. They don’t deserve this, man.
There is a lot of stuff going on here, but a decent portion of the movie deals with the kidnapping/torture of Cheryl Dempsey. She was a teenager when she was abducted. She was abused physically and mentally to a terrible extent. We see the torture. We see her mind cracking under the strain of it all. It’s heartbreaking.
In a particularly chilling scene, the killer videotapes himself as he approaches Cheryl’s mom, offering to help find her child. Eventually it dawns on her mother that she is talking to the man who took her daughter. As she is paralyzed with fear, the killer laughs and walks off. That scene broke me down. Of all the things I saw him do over the course of this movie, that felt like one of the worst. It felt like someone punching me in the gut. The torture I can take. But that? That’s a bridge too far, fella.
But that wasn’t the worst. Not really. He did some, let’s call it “creative surgery,” that was horrifying. Just horrifying.
Both his psychological and physical torture are next level sadistic. If this man existed in real life and was anywhere close to my town, I would have picked up and moved a long time ago. Maybe burned my house on my way out of town for good measure.
I feel like I’m really talking this movie up. I liked it, but it wasn’t perfect. There are some slow moments. There are some scares that don’t really land. But those are small moments and relatively easy to overlook. Again, it’s a short movie, and those moments are in the minority. For the most part, this is an extremely well-done movie. It used the found footage genre to perfection.
If you’re looking for an unsettling serial killer movie, this is it. It has had a troubled release history, so it’s not the easiest movie to track down, but you can find it if you search hard enough. That aspect makes this a little creepier: it’s a movie about hours and hours of torture and murder, and it’s not easy to track down. That aspect makes it feel a little more real.
Turn off the lights, check to make sure all your doors and windows are locked and throw this on. You may find yourself staring at the screen as the credits roll, wondering what you have gotten yourself into. Then checking all the closets in your house. Just in cases, you know?
Rating: 5/5
Notable actors: Bobbi Sue Luther, a real serial killer (probably)
At its core, this is a slasher movie about a girl who stays on campus over Thanksgiving break and finds herself stalked by 4 murdering psychopaths. The psychopaths kill a couple security guards, and the only thing standing between our heroine and certain death are her own wits.
It’s pretty standard slasher fare. As far as standard slashers go, this was a pretty good one. Yes, there were some pretty huge leaps in logic, but that’s to be expected. (People jump off tall buildings and are able to get up and run away all the time, right?) There’s also a fair about of slasher logic on display here, but it’s a slasher. I’m fine with it.
I believe that a slasher movie can really only be as good as its final girl, and we got a good one here. Although the movie is called Kristy, our final girl is Justine (I’ll get to that in a bit), and she’s terrific, provided you don’t really ask any questions about how she got the skills she shows off. She’s a likable character, but that kind of information takes a backseat to the real question: is she a fighter? The answer is a resounding “yes.” She uses her knowledge of the campus to her advantage. She turns the tables on her attackers. When she’s cornered, she doesn’t panic. Okay…she panics, but then she looks for a way out.
I liked all of that. But there’s another storyline running throughout the movie. This group of murderers are part of a larger group. This group has cells all over the country, and they all have one goal: “Kill Kristy.” They use Kristy as a code. It basically stands for any rich white girl who appears to have a good life. These groups stalk these “Kristys”, kill them and carve a “K” into their faces. They videotape the entire process and upload it to a central server. All the videos of dead Kristys, all in one place. They watch these videos on multiple TVs at the same time, like a moving murder quilt.
We see a lot of this before we even meet Justine. The movie opens with the murder of a pretty girl in a field, then a whole lot of distorted dialogue across the network. “Kill Kristy.” “Kristy is God. Kill God.” Things like that.
I didn’t like any of that. The idea that there was a larger group than these 4 killers wasn’t bad, but the execution was terrible. It was supposed to feel like this menacing presence, but it just annoyed me. If they would have cut that stuff out of the beginning and had it as a big reveal at the end, I probably would have liked it better. As it was, it was handled poorly in the beginning and I had a bad taste in my mouth for the first 20 minutes.
Also, all the killers wear masks made out of foil and do the whole, “tilt my head,” move. You know the one.
That’s the one
That’s fine when it’s Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees; after all, they’re unstoppable killers who aren’t even really human. They tilt their heads because they truly don’t understand what is going on, like a confused dog. A regular person doing it doesn’t really strike me as menacing, even with a mask. It just comes off as forced.
Unless they’re trying to emulate Myers and Voorhees. In which case, you just look like you’re trying too hard. Get a new intimidation tactic, because this one isn’t working.
As it stands, this is a perfectly decent slasher movie that reaches for heights it can’t quite achieve.
Rating: 3/5
Notable actors: Haley Bennett (Hardcore Henry), Ashley Green (Twilight, The Apparition), Chris Coy (Banshee)
For the third year straight year a horror movie has made the festival rounds and has received rave reviews from self-proclaimed non-horror fans. In 2014 it was The Babadook. In 2015 it was It Follows. In 2016 we have The Witch. I consider myself lucky in that I was able to avoid trailers for any of these films (which I was shockingly able to accomplish without even trying too hard). However, it was impossible to ignore the hype they all got. Even with that hype, The Babadook and It Follows exceeded my expectations. I went into The Witch hoping for the same experience. Going in, the only thing I knew about it was that it was “terrifying.”
I feel like I should have a lot of smart things to say about this film. It is set in 17th century New England and it uses a lot of authentic language and accents. Some of the dialogue is actually taken directly from journals written during that time period. It is a dark film, both figuratively and literally: many shots are only provided the light of a candle. It sets a mood that is authentic to the time period, but it also allows for lots of dark corners for things to hide. This is not the kind of film that has things jumping out from dark corners, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t there, silently peering from the darkness.
Perhaps that’s part of why I feel like I should have smart things to say. Robert Eggers – the director – put a lot of research and care into this film. Every shot is a work of art. I was drawn in from the opening scene. Watching this in the theater was a truly immersive experience, and the rest of my theater seemed to feel the same way, as I barely heard any noise throughout the entire film. Or maybe they were asleep. It was impossible to tell.
NO ONE SLEEPS
Now let’s get back to the one word review I kept hearing uttered in hushed tones: “terrifying.” It was always spoken as if the person saying it had been hiding beneath a blanket for months, but felt the need to emerge to utter this declaration of warning.
Maybe it’s because I have seen a lot of horror movies, but I did not find this to be terrifying. I did, however, find it to be deeply unsettling. Long after the final image left the screen, I sat in my chair staring at the screen. I walked to my car in a daze. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder waiting for something to pop out at me, but I was looking out into the misty afternoon, wondering if something lurked in the fields beyond. I didn’t lose any sleep over this movie, but I did find myself thinking about it constantly over the next week. There was not a particular scene I found myself mulling over: it was the tone of the entire movie. The feeling of dread I felt and carried with me out of that theater. That’s what I kept coming back to. It wasn’t the movie that stuck with me: it was that feeling.
I remember a similar feeling after watching the original Night of the Living Dead for the first time. The movies don’t share many similarities, but that feeling as I walked out of the theater was the same: like something dark was hanging over my head that was impossible to shake.
We see the titular witch early in the film, which is a fascinating decision. As we watched a family grow more and more suspicious of each other, Eggers easily could have played on that and make the audience question whether there actually was a witch, or whether it was just religious hysteria gripping the family. Instead, we knew from early on that there was an actual witch lurking in the woods. The question as to whether someone in the family is actually in league with the witch (or Satan) is one that the audience is forced to ask over and over again, but we have definitive proof that there is, in fact, a witch.
Knowing that there is a dark presence in the forest does not forgive the religious fanaticism that threatens to tear the family apart, but it does cast it in another light. The devil is real and we know that to be true. What happens to the family is driven by this presence, but it does not force them to blame each other for everything that goes wrong. The Puritanical oversimplification of religion – “all good comes from God, all bad comes from Satan” – is on full display here. While I wish I could say that is simply the product of a bygone era, I know all too well that this kind of thinking still exists. It’s not that simple. It has never been that simple.
I don’t want to say too much more, as I don’t want to spoil the movie.
The cast was perfect (Black Phillip included). The movie was a bit slow at points, but I was so riveted by what I was seeing that I never felt bored or that the movie was dragging.
The soundtrack really helped propel this movie to another level. Creepy atmospherics combined with a slowly bubbling cacophony that ended in massive eruptions. It really upped the “creep factor.” There is nothing inherently creepy about looking at a bunch of trees, but this movie managed to do that multiple times, and the soundtrack was a huge part of that.
Thomasin waits for a bass drop that will never come
This was not a terrifying movie. If you’re looking for jump scares, you will not find them here. But if you want a slow burning, unnerving horror thriller with disturbing imagery, you owe it to yourself to watch this movie. On a grey day, turn off the lights and spend some time with this movie. Focus on it. Let it transport you back to that specific time and place in history and feel what it was like.
Unlike The Babadook and It Follows, the hype hurts this movie. It didn’t reach out and grab me. But, after thinking about it for a couple weeks, I think I really love this movie. The authentic language can be tough to understand sometimes, but that’s a small complaint. In the end, it really helped pull me into that period.
This is a pretty much shot-for-shot remake of Cabin Fever (originally released in the not-so-distant past of 2002). There has been a lot of negative discussion about the fact that this remake even exists, but I had two things in my favor going into this:
1. I’m not a particularly big fan of the original Cabin Fever. It’s fine, but I never understood the love it gets.
2. I don’t really have an issue with remakes.
With that in mind, I waited until my child was asleep and I fired this up. Oh, the excitement.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the plot, Cabin Fever follows 5 college students as they head out to a cabin for a weeklong vacation. They have a run-in with a hobo who has been infected with a flesh-eating virus. They set him on fire (as you do) and try to put the incident behind them, only to start showing signs of the disease themselves.
There is also a dog named Dr. Mambo who may be trying to eat them.
All caught up?
Two minutes in I knew I was in trouble. While it wasn’t exactly shot-for-shot (they carved a lot of script out), it was pretty close. However, the acting wasn’t as good, the music was louder than it had any reason to be and any humor that existed had been stripped away. That left me watching a poorly written movie played deadly serious. They said every line so earnestly it made Marky Mark’s character in The Happening blush.
“This cabin has meaning to me!”
I spent most of the movie trying to figure out who this was made for. As I mentioned at the top, the original came out in 2002. It is also held up in horror circles as a cult classic. I know there are many people out there who fell in love with the horror genre due in no small part to that movie.
This movie wasn’t made for them. Those people loved the original. Since this added absolutely nothing, there was no reason for this movie to take the place of their beloved original. Nor should it.
And that’s not even talking about Cabin Fever/Eli Roth superfans. I am not a superfan of either, yet I’ve been a horror fan long enough that I have seen the original more than once.
Was this made for new fans? I suppose you could make that case, but I don’t understand the point. Yes, it has been 14 years since the original came out, but I feel like it has aged pretty well. The effects still look good, which is one of the most important things to consider for an older movie. I mentioned that they cut a lot out of the script, but I believe the only things they added in were a couple of lines about video games and the internet. That tells me they didn’t feel a huge need to punch up the script to make it more modern. The original is out there. I feel like new horror fans would know Cabin Fever by reputation and would seek out the original. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’ll watch this one because it’s new, but this is just a worse version of the original. If the filmmakers attempted to differentiate it, I would be able to see the point. But they didn’t. It’s a dim copy of the original.
It doesn’t use the set-up to reveal anything new about the genre: to poke fun at its foibles. (With Cabin in the Woods just having come out in 2012, that would have been redundant anyway.) They could have taken this as a chance to show how far horror has come since 2002. This was released on VOD. Why not take it a little further? Throw some more carnage at us. I’m not saying I necessarily wanted to see more carnage, but at least that would be something different. You’re on VOD. Go wild.
I wanted to see them either go the route of carnage or go the route of laughs. Maybe both. Instead, they made the exact same movie. It did nothing new with the genre or the source material.
But maybe they didn’t want to do that. “I want to do a remake where I don’t add any humor but I also don’t actually show a woman getting eaten by a dog.” That’s fine. In that situation, the least you can do is change up the order or method of the kills.
By my count, only one death differed from the original in terms of timing. It was pushed up just enough that it took me off guard. The rest of the deaths pretty much took place using the exact same beats as the original. There were some tweaks in the method in which they died, but not huge tweaks. Because of this, I never felt uneasy. I never felt like this movie was going to show me something I hadn’t already seen. With the element of suspense gone, all that was left was to rely on the rest of the elements of the movie to keep me invested, but they weren’t good enough (or different enough) to do that. I wanted a little danger. A little uncertainty.
Deputy Winston was a female in this version. So that’s something different, I guess.
Just because there was no danger or uncertainty doesn’t mean the music didn’t reach ear-shattering levels when a scene was building to a “shocking conclusion” that we already knew about. I felt like I could hear the director screaming, “FEEL SOMETHING,” every time the music reached a fever pitch.
You won’t catch me saying good things about the Psycho remake, but you can at least see what they were going for. They were trying to bring the story of Psycho into a new era, where people may have been inclined to say, “I’m not watching Psycho because it’s in black and white.” (That being said, there is no reason to watch the remake of Psycho because the original is perfect in every way.) If nothing else, that’s a somewhat valid reason to remake a movie. Aside from, “We wanted to make another sequel but the last one did so horribly that we decided to reboot the original instead,” there is no reason to remake this movie using the exact same script.
As it turns out, that’s the exact reason this movie exists. Cabin Fever: Patient Zero didn’t bring in much money when it was released on VOD, at which point the thoughts of another sequel went out the window and the idea of a remake surfaced, with the hopes of reviving the series. By using the same script, it meant they were able to get right into making the movie. “None of this writing nonsense to bog us down,” I’m sure they said to each other. (One source reported it made $0 on VOD, but that can’t be right.)
I have spent a lot of time comparing it to the original, because it’s hard not to with a movie like this. But let me take a moment to talk about this movie without referencing the original.
It was fine, I guess. I didn’t like a single character, so I felt nothing when they died. The make-up was pretty good. After a bit of a slow start, the last 30 minutes was jam-packed with action. Some of it was fun, but, again, the insanely loud music took me out of the moment more than once, and the acting wasn’t good enough to take any of it seriously.
The gore was good. The deaths were entertaining, with at least one of them making me a little uneasy.
It’s not a good movie, but it’s not totally without merit. If I stumbled across this late at night and knew nothing about it, I’m sure I would have been somewhat entertained.
This is a below-average movie that gets dinged pretty heavily for being an exact copy of a well-regarded horror movie. I’m not offended that this exists. I’m not mad or disappointed. More than anything, I’m just confused.
Rating: 0/5
I will say that I didn’t miss Eli Roth’s stoner Grim. I always hated that character. Grim was much more subdued (and more than a little threatening) in this version, and I kind of liked that.
