Horror challenge #100: "Truth or Dare (2012)"

This is a nasty little horror thriller that sends a message that it's a bad idea to bully people, but instead of focusing on the harm bullying can cause, it mostly focuses on the harm people can cause when they avenge bullying.  In the movie, a prank at a party drives a student to do something terrible, and then several months later five friends who were at that party are invited to this kid's birthday party.  they don't like him, but they come for the free booze, only to be held hostage by a maniac and forced to play a game of "Truth or Dare" with deadly consequences.  There's a lot of icky torture scenes in the movie, and even though this group is full of people who are kind of assholes, they still don't deserve what happens to them.  There are a lot of twists along the way and the ending is great.  I really enjoyed this one.

Horror Chalenge #99: "Ghost from the Machine"

This movie got a lot of comparisons to "The Sixth Sense," and I guess I can see why, but it wasn't as suspenseful or as scary as that movie.  Here, a young man is thrown when his parents fie in an accident and he suddenl;y has custody of his preteen brother.  He becomes obsessed with building a machine that will gather electromagnetic energy because he thinks he can possibly bring back the spirits of his dead parents.  Soon, ghosts are coming back all over town, but they don't know they're dead, and they aren't all nice, either.  It turns out that some of the people who used to live in his house did very bad things before they died, and you wouldn't want them coming back to haunt you (especially since the ghosts in this movie are able to take corporeal form and pick up objects and touch people).  The movie is kind of interesting and a little sad, but I wish it could have been better.  It ran on a little long and took forever to get to its point.

Horror Challenge #98: "Sadako 3D"

This is the movie made to cash in on both the recent 3D craze and the success of the Ringu movies.  Because it was made to be 3D, the filmmakers spend a lot of time throwing things at the screen so they would jump out on viewers who saw the movie in 3D, but I didn't see it in 3D, so it got kind of annoying after awhile.  The story here is that a bunch of people start committing suicide after the film from the original Ringu gets posted on the internet by some guy who was obsessed with bringing Sadako back into the world so she could kill everyone (what a jerk).  This movie isn't as scary as the original, nor does it have the most cohesive storyline, but it did have some spooky moments.  It probably would have been better if I saw it in 3D (or better still if it hadn't been made so I didn't have to watch it at all).

Horror Challenge #97: "The Initiation"

This is one of those rare 80s slashers that I haven't seen, even though I love slasher movies, so I was excited to finally watch it.  It's one of those movies where something terrible happened to the main character but she doesn't remember it, and when people start getting killed she doesn't realize that it has anything to do with her or her dark family secret, but the past comes back to haunt her until she's forced to face the truth.  I like movies like this, and I also like where most of the action is set in an abandoned shopping mall after hours, because the setting is creepy, and it adds to the creepiness of the movie.  The acting isn't the greatest, and the plot is kind of ridiculous, but I still had a lot of fun with this one.

Horror Challenge #96: "Walled In"

This is the first movie of the challenge to give me nightmares.  I kind of predicted that would happen after I saw it, because I'm kind of claustrophobic, and the subject matter of this movie really got under my skin because of that.  It's about a demolitions expert named Samantha who visits a building that is set to be demolished.  The building has a grisly history, because the architect buried people alive within the walls of the building and it was a huge scandal.  The spirits of the building seem to be communicating with Samantha, warning her about some danger, but they're not specific enough to protect her from what's about to happen.

Right at the beginning of the movie a little girl is trapped inside the walls and drowned in cement while she cries for her daddy and screams and begs.  It's horrible to watch, and that's what really got to me about this movie, imagining what it must have been like for those poor people trapped inside the walls of the building.  This is a grisly little movie and it's hard to watch, but I loved it.

orror Challenge #95: "Die"

This movie is a lot like the "Saw" movies, only with less gore.  Strangers wake up trapped in a room together and try to figure out why they're there.  A bad guy shows up and makes them play a game in order to earn their freedom.  This isn't like "Saw" in that they have a chance as long as they listen to the guy and follow his directions correctly, this villain has them roll a die and let fate decide whether they live or not.  It's creepy, and the overlapping story of the people forced to play the game with the cops trying to figure out what's going on is compelling.  I enjoyed this one.

Horror Challenge #94: "Unknown Origin"

This movie is basically a ripoff of John Carpenter's "The Thing."  It's about a submarine crew who answer a distress call to a ship where most of the crew are dead and the ones left don't speak English.  They come abord the rescue ship, but they're bringing a guest: an alien life form that wants to take over human bodies and gain control of the earth.  Our crew starts getting picked off one by one and eventually they have to figure out who is infected with the alien life form (because they won't listen to me yelling at the screen telling them who is infected).  The special effects aren't that great, but once the action started getting going, I was at least interested to see what happened next, so it wasn't terrible.  Nothing to write home about, though.