Horror Challenge #57: "The Possession"

Isn't this poster cool?  This poster for the movie is much cooler than the more famous one that's plastered everywhere.  I don't know why they didn't use this poster more, because I really like it, plus it makes the movie seem a lot more creepy, whereas the more well-known poster for this movie looks like a ripoff of the poster for The Exorcist (and you don't want to invite that comparison when your movie was so obviously inspired by The Exorcist...I don't care if this is supposedly a "true story," they were milking the influence of to "The Exorcist" for all it was worth).  And honestly, for me that wouldn't be so bad, since I'm not a huge fan of The Exorcist (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a terrible person and not a real horror fan, I've heard, but I honestly think that movie is overhyped and praised more than its potboiler of a plot deserves). 

So anyway, this movie is about a young girl whose parents are divorcing, so shes having a rough time already, and she comes across a box that seems to be sealed shut, but it has cool carvings engraved on it, so she's drawn to it, and when she gets the box open she finds lots of trinkets inside, like a carved wooden horse, and an evil spirit.  Neat.  So she starts to change as the spirit takes over her, and her dad takes way too long to realize what's going on, and her mom just blames the dad, and I want to smack them both.  So eventually everyone finally gets on the same page, and they try to exorcise the evil spirit, and it's creepy and cool.  Nothing I haven't seen before, but not a bad way to kill an hour and a half.

Horror Challenge #56: "Blood Runs Cold"

I love me a good slasher movie, and yes, I think this is a good slasher movie, which means I disagree with like, 98% of the other people who've reviewed this movie and said how terrible it is.  I really don't get why so many people hated this movie so much.  It's got some great gore, a character I actually like, a creepy killer, a sense of isolation, and that alone would make me enjoy it since I love slashers so much.  I don't know what those other reviewers were expecting, b ut this movie delivered for me.

It's about a singer who needs some time off to focus and write some songs, so her manager rents her a secluded cabin in a snowy location far away from the city so she can regroup.  He must have given her terrible directions though, because she stumbles across the wrong cabin (and the worst possible one she could have found, since this cabin is home to a creepy killer who likes to have tourists for dinner).  Her first night at the cabin she runs into an old boyfriend at a local bar and invites he and his friends to join her, and they helpfully provide most of the body count for the movie.

I really like the snowy location, which is actually literally chilling for me, and the killer is really creepy, so I dug this movie.  I'll go against everyone else who has seen this movie and tell you that if you like slashers, you might enjoy it.

Horror Challenge #55: "Kill Baby Kill"

This movie is one of my favorites from Mario Bava, the famous Italian horror movie director who is known for his eerie, moody, creepy atmosphere that makes his movies even more foreboding.  This story of a little girl who was killed in a village that turned its back on her, and how she has exacted her revenge from beyond the grave, is moody and mean-spirited and nasty, plus scary little kids creep me out, so I love it.

Horror Challenge #54: "Gamera"

This is one of those movies I've heard about since I was a kid, but I've never watched.  I'm behind on my giant monster movies, obviously.  Sadly, the dubbing of this movie is terrible, so that's something else for the MST3K guys to snark about, and as always, their comments make the viewing experience more fun.

Horror Challenge #53: "Pod People"

This movie is really terrible.  Luckily I watched the MST3K version, so I at least got to hear some snarky sarcasm to go along with the terrible plot and bad acting.

Horror Challenge #52: "Cabin in the Woods"

Ok, so I'll be honest here.  When this movie first started, I was pissed off and wanted to turn it off, and the only reason I didn't do that is because it's horror movie month, and I have to watch as many horror movies as possible, even when they're arrogant, pretentious little pieces of shit that think they're smarter than I am.  That's really what this movie seems to be at first (ok, until over halfway through, actually) so I wasn't pleased.  This movie seems to think it's really clever, but I've seen it many times before.  There's one movie going on, the story about the characters we're supposed to actually care about, the ones going to the cabin where they'll probably all get killed, and then there's the OTHER STORY, the SUPER SEEKRIT SMRT ONE behind the scenes where everything is controlled and nothing is as it seems and blah blah blah yawn. 

Yeah, this movie adds some more technical crap trying to be all fancy, but it's essentially the same smarmy crap story I hated when I saw the movie "Identity," or the movie "Funny Games," so I wasn't impressed.  But after awhile, I actually did start to care about the characters who were left, and it turns out the movie actually has a plot, a reason all this is happening besides "haha, we fooled you, we're smarter than you," so in the end it wasn't that bad.  This kind of movie is never going to be my favorite, though.  I happen to LIKE watching movies about people who go to a cabin in the woods and get killed, and that doesn't make me stupid (or a bad person).  Yeah, this movie winds up being good, but it's not for the reasons it THINKS, so yeah, not gonna lie, there are movies I've enjoyed much more this year because they don't THINK they're the smartest movie I've seen this year, and that makes them a lot more fun.

Horror Movie Challenge #51: "The Black Waters of Echo's Pond"

First of all, I have to say that I LOVE the poster for this movie.  It looks like the old 80s horror movie posters that I loved when I was a kid, and it gives me a hit of nostalgia for those days.  This movie is one of those "buried" movies that was talked about a lot but so rare that not many people had seen it, so it had a little legend going about it, and cult horror fans rejoiced when it was finally released on DVD this year.  I've wanted to see it for awhile, and I got it for my birthday this year, so I was stoked to finally get a chance to see it.

This movie is about a group of friends who gather at an island cottage to spend a weekend partying.  Of course there are plenty of buried feuds and enough hard feelings for the demonic forces on the island to play with as they try to turn the friends against each other.  The group finds a creepy game buried in the basement and decides to play it (because none of them have seen "Jumanji" so they don't realize that this is a bad idea) and soon the questions on the game's cards start hitting too close to home and chaos ensues.

There's a lot of cool gore in this movie as people do nasty things to each other, and it's great seeing Danielle Harris in anything (even though I didn't really like her character here...actually I don't think I liked any of the characters in this movie).  There was also a cool twist at the end that put a nasty little spin on things, and I appreciated that.  Overall this was a fun movie that was definitely worth the wait.