It's almost Halloween!
Some more movies to add to the list...
Frankenhooker <---Helpful link to full thoughts
The fiance of a part-time scientist dies in a grisly accident that leaves her in pieces and leaves him heartbroken. Not one to let a little thing like dismemberment get in the way of his love life, he decides to piece her back together. Only he doesn't have enough parts left. So he sets off to buy a suitable hooker to get the remaining parts from. Explosive hi-jinks ensue.
This is a horror/comedy that's sort of an ode to the cheap horror and sci-fi films from the 50s, so your mileage will vary depending on your sense of humor. But I thought it was pretty funny for the most part. Not perfect perhaps. But silly and smart enough in places that it made me giggle a few times, which is more than I can say for a lot of horror comedies, so I'll consider that a minor win. It is quite a bit sexist considering the subject matter. But it's also pretty self-aware about it, too. So it doesn't feel quite so assholish. If you like silly horror, then it's worth at least one watch.
Apartment 7A
An injured dancer moves into a new building full of suspiciously helpful people who seem oddly invested in making her life better. But the longer she stays the more she begins to suspect that all of her helpful neighbors are harboring ulterior motives.
So, uh, have you seen
Rosemary's Baby? Did you like it? Well then, good news! Cause this is basically
Rosemary's Baby, just from a different perspective. In fact, it's a prequel to that film/book. Which I wasn't aware of before I started watching it, but it became pretty apparent that that's what it was while I did. On the plus side, it's very well put together. Well written main character. Excellent acting. Wonderfully creepy atmosphere. Beautiful cinematography and choreography. So overall just a lovely movie to watch. The downside of course, is that if you're at all familiar with
Rosemary's Baby you, uh, know exactly where this film is going. So once you realize what it is, all the suspense is kinda shot to hell. But other than that, it's a nice film.
Available on Paramount+
Animas
When her best friend starts going to therapy and gets a girlfriend, a young woman suddenly begins losing time and starts seeing dark specters behind every corner....
Another Spanish horror movie that starts off really good, but then kinda looses itself by the end. It's well acted and looks great, but the pacing at the beginning is kinda sluggish, and the confusing narrative doesn't necessarily help it. The thing that irked me though, was that they were trying for a "twist". Except that the "twist" in question that they chose to go with is not only starting to feel overused at this point, but is also fairly easily telegraphed well before the movie gets around to it. So it doesn't feel nearly as impactful as it should. So, overall a decent film, but it kinda fumbles the ball at the end there.
Streaming on Netflix
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
A group of kids running from some bullies enter the town's infamous "haunted house" and discover a haunted book that writes scary stories in itself about the people the previous owner doesn't like...stories that end up coming true.
This one was good. Not really all that scary, but definitely creepy, and also kinda cute in places. The monster designs were simple, but also very well done and quite unsettling, and the creepy atmosphere was great. I did find a couple of the story elements questionable, but the designs and acting were good enough that it didn't bother me too much. Most definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet.
Streaming on Netflix
Aftermath
A couple suffering through some marital issues decides to start afresh by moving to a new house that happens to have an unsettling past. Naturally, bizarre things start to happen and the wife begins to question whether or not their move to the "perfect house" was such a great idea.
Okay, this film kinda irked me. Not because of the generalized plot or anything. That was fine. And the building tension and suspense was also effective and well implemented, so that was fine too. In fact, I liked most of those parts. What my main issue basically boils down to, is that neither of the two main characters are at all likable. Which I think is kind of important if you want your viewer to at all care what happens to them. Which the movie does, but then it also decides to make them both as annoying as possible. It starts right off the bat by making the wife loathsome, because she had an affair. So, okay, you're on the husband's side. (And she also has some family issues and doesn't seem to care when her sister just disappears off the face of the Earth, but mostly it's the affair.) But then it goes out of it's way to make him insufferable, too. Not because he's hurt and betrayed by her actions. He is, and understandably so. No, they make him annoying because he immediately jumps into gaslighting mode when his wife starts experiencing strange things in the house. And admittedly this is a thing other movies do as well, where one person is mad at the other and start calling them crazy, but here it's doubly worse because (1) there's a big difference between "I think you're just hearing things" and "you can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality", and (2).... he experienced it too! There is literally a point he hears someone beating on their bedroom door in the middle of the night and he chases them through the house before he looses them. So he knows someone is getting into the house. He acknowledges as much to his wife AND the police. Yet when she says it's happening again later he continues to shrug it off as her making shit up. Like, DUDE. Are you serious? If your go-to comeback to everything she says is "you cray-cray", then just get a divorce already. Cause clearly the therapy is NOT helping.
AND THEN the movie tries to gloss over all of this and the rest of their marital BS (that was never addressed!) with an ending that's essentially "and then they moved out and got a dog and lived happily ever after, completely ignoring all their previous financial problems and the fact that her sister and their dog were murdered in that very house, cause no one cares about any of that anymore. The End." Goodness did parts of this movie irritate me....
Streaming on Netflix
