One year not all that long ago, I was talking with a friend about horror movies, and we got onto the subject of the movie "Tales from the Hood." He said he liked it, but he thought it was racist against white people. I asked him why and he said it was because all the white people in the movie are racist. Now, it's not really true, although most of the people in that movie are despicable people because that's the point of the movie (bad people get what'scoming to them, like in Tales from the Crypt, but with actual black people in it) and i tried to explain this to him, and i told him that besides that point, he shouldn't take the only horror movie that either of us could name that had predominantly black people in it and say it's racist against white people. It's not a good look, bro. As someone who watches a LOT of horror movies, I've always lamented that most of them show a sea of white faces and almost never any black people, because it's annoying. There are black people in the world, so there should be black people in movies. I always tell people it's because black people are too smart to stay in the haunted house or get killed by the slasher (the movie "The Skeleton Key" makes a similar observation) but one thing I've started to appreciate about more recent horrormovies is that they have a more diverse cast of characters and not everyone is lily white anymore. Jordan Peele in particular has made some pretty bomb-ass movies that feature predominantly black characters, abd i must talk about this a lot, because when i bought this movie my friend the cashier told me i would like it because "it has a lot of black people in it." I'm hoping that i DO like it. Ive been looking forward to finally watching it for awhile now.
This movie is about a family who moves back to the same beachfront town where the wife, Adelaide, used to live when she was a little girl. Adelaide had a terrifying experience there when she was younger, and now she's nervous that something terrible is going to happen again. Her husband thinks she's overreacting at first, but soon he begins to realize that something strange is indeed going on when a strange family shows up in their driveway one night and refuses to leave. The masked family are giving serious "The Strangers" vibes, and they literally break into the house and force the family to defend themselves against these strange intruders. The masked people are scary enough on their own, but it's when the masks come off that things start to really get terrifying. Now the family is fighting for more than their lives, they're fighting for their very souls.
If i had an experience like the one Adelaide has in the opening sequence of this movie, there's no way in hell that i would ever go back to that place. Why do people in horrormovies always do stuff like this? At least she's afraid that something bad will happen, she's not totally oblivious like most horror movie moms are for way too long in movies like this. I don't want to give away too much of the plot like every other synopsis of this movie seems to do, but the part I don't want to spoil comes about 20 or 30 minutes into the movie, so it's not the end or anything, and I already knew it was going to happen before I even read the synopsis that spoiled the surprise, because someone told me what was going to happen. I guess they didn't think they were ruining anything because like Isaid, you do find out pretty early in the movie, but I'm still not going to tell you what happens. You'll have to dodge every other description of this movie if you want to keep it a surprise, though.
I'm glad I decided to watch this movie instead of going to bed like i almost did. Originally i was going to watch this movie and three others for my last four movies of the challenge, but this morning "A Haunting in Venice" showed up on Hulu and i just HAD TO watch that one instead of this one, but that one ended up being disappointing for me because it was more about Hercule Poirot's ego than anything else. I needed one more good scary movie this challenge, and this one is it. Lupito Nyong'o is great in this movie. She makes me care about her character even while she's simultaneously scaring the crap out of me. And the use of music is great in this movie too. I'll never be able to look at The Beach Boys the same way again. Or hear "Fuck the Police" without thinking of this movie. That's something "The Strangers" did, too. I'll always think of that movie when I hear the song "Mama Tried" by Merle Haggard, and I'll always think of "The Strangers 2" when i hear Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. Good horror movies do that, they make you remember them.
And then just when I was saying I liked the husband, and he figured out that things were going wrong pretty quickly and did something about it, he had to go and be stupid like typical horror movie people always do. But it led to my favorite lines of the movie; "What are micro machines?" "What's Home Alone?" Trust me, when you see the movie, you'll get what I mean. The kids in this movie are great too. They don't waste time like kids in horror movies tend to do, dragging everybody down, they figure out what's going on and come up with some pretty creative ways to fight back. Until they mess up and put everyone back in danger again, but I can't really blame them for that, since this isn't a typical situation they find themselves in and I wouldn't know how to react either. Overall, everyone in the family is pretty likeable, which is a big switch from the majority of movies I've watched today where no one was likeable. Kudos to this movie for getting me to care about the characters and sustaining that through some pretty weird stuff. The movie does falter a bit near the end when it gets just a little too weird and over-explainy, but that's a small quibble when the rest of the movie us so good. Definitely check this one out. It's well worth the watch.
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