Friday, October 23, 2015

2015 October Horror Challenge #61 "Curdled"



I've wanted to see this movie for years, ever since Fangoria, a horror magazine, ran an article about this movie in the 90s before it came out.  Back then, Quentin Tarantino was just starting to become big (now he's so well known that autocorrect suggests his name before you can finish typing it) but having his name associated with your movie in any way must have been cool for a filmmaker, so since he co-wrote the scteenplay, this movie had some indie street cred going for it, and further, when the short film that inspired this movie was in turn rumored to have inspired a famous sequence from Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," Tarantino fans must have been geeked.  I know i was, and it made me want to see this movie even more.

Reb Braddock was the writer and director of this flick, and  the movie was a quirky little horror comedy about a girl so obsessed with death that she gets a job cleaning up crime scenes, where she runs afoul of s local serial killer.  Since I was a young girl obsessed with death myself, the plot appealed to me, but I'd almost forgotten about this movie until Netflix added it to their catalog.  Now I'd finally get to see it!

The movie opens with a sequence showing us how our main character Gabriella first became obsessed with death after witnessing a murder as a child.  It would be easy to make her a creepy, annoying, or unlikable character, but she seems nice enough, if a bit strange.  She watches a lot of horror movies, but tends to find them funny.  Stuff like yhat.  Our killer is an arrogant, entitled.kind of guy, so not a fun person to be around (especially after he kills you horribly).

Of course, Gabriella does get a little crazy (there's a dancing sequence that has to be seen to be believed...it's pretty amazing) but I was still kind of rooting for her to catch the killer, learn a lesson, maybe kick down her craziness a bit, and live happily ever after.  Sue me.  I like happy endings.  This movie is a lot of fun, with enough of the old Tarantino style and charm (before he got caught up in his own hype and drowned his plots in vats of "style" until they became unbearable to watch).  It's too bad that the ending of this movie sucks, because until the last 20 minutes or so, I was having fun.  Pity.  The movie is still worth checking out though, I suppose.

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