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.

Horror Challenge #50: "Sinister"

This is a movie that had a lot of hype surrounding it for me before I even got a chance to see it.  A few of my friends were so scared by the movie that they had to leave the room, so I was kind of dreading watching it while being excited to see it at the same time, and hoping it lived up to the hype.  The verdict is that it was a good movie and very well made, but not as scary as I expected.

The movie stars Ethan Hawke as a writer who moves his family to a small town and into the house where another family was murdered so that he can investigate the case and write a book about it.  As soon as he moves in, strange things start happening (and of course he's too dumb to realize that this is a very BAD SIGN) and he soon discovers that this murder case may be connected to many others throughout the years, and there's a component of the supernatural at work here (which of course he doesn't believe in, despite truckloads of evidence to the contrary, because like I mentioned, he's a GENIUS). 

I don't want to give anything away, because I think the plot had a lot of cool ideas and more originality than I've seen in awhile.  I figured all the twists out long before they were revealed (because of my highly honed observational skills and because I've seen a zillion horror movies before) but even knowing what was going to happen, it was still compelling to watch because I liked this guy and his family.  The characters were very well drawn.  My only complaint, besides guessing what was going on, was that the movie didn't scare me as much as I thought it might (meaning it didn't leave me in a terror induced coma) but now that the movie is over with and the lights are off, I find myself acutely aware of every creepy noise in the house around me, so maybe this will be one of those movies that takes awhile to take effect but ends up putting me in therapy for years to come.  Either way, this was a great movie and I loved every minute.