Horrorfest: A review
This weekend was the celebrated weekend of Horrorfest: 8 movies that will change your life. I was ecstatic for it, as I thought at least 4 of these movies looked pretty scary from the website and the trailers. Also, I got into a discussion whether or not all 8 movies were going to be scary. My argument was that the title wasn't '7 films that will change your life then one other shitty movie.' But my argument was flawed. So here are some simple reviews of the movies, hopefully without giving anything (or at least too much) away.
Day 1
Movie 1: Dark Ride - From the previews I thought this one was kind of scary looking. Except from the 'ride' portion in the title, I thought it might be a movie like whatever that movie Paul Walker was in. You know, road trip, someone following you trying to kill you for no reason. In general, I would say this movie was pretty bad, but some of the effects were ok. And the kill scenes were pretty funny. And by funny I mean probably disturbing to most people, but I laughed a lot. Also, if you want to make a scary movie, I would say casting the catcher from The Sandlot is a bad move. Yet another bad scary movie with "dark" in the title.
Movie 2: Rinne: Reincarnation - The movie from Taka Shimizu. I was looking forward to this one, since it wasn't a shitty sequel to a good first movie, and it was one of the "Horror 6-pack" (as I've termed it) from the director. This movie wasn't really scary in the same way as The Grudge and there wasn't stuff jumping out scaring you, but there was a freaky looking doll, little creepy Asian kids, and a pretty cool ending that was also pretty weird.
Movie 3: Unrest - I'm not sure how I felt about this movie. On one hand, the main character really annoyed me. On the other hand, she was really hot, so I couldn't make up my mind. In this one we never saw the scary thing, so I guess a lot of the tension was pointless. But it was pretty creepy in general, if you think morgues and cadavers and dead things are creepy. And I do, so I thought it was pretty good.
Day 2
Movie 4: Penny Dreadful - They got the dreadful part right. This movie was terrible. This was in the same realm of Dark Water. Again, from the trailer I thought this might be like that shitty Paul Walker movie, but it was possibly worse. It was terribly boring. There was barely anything happening in it. It kind of reminded me of Phone Booth in that regard. Also, I hated the main character in this movie. She was such a whiny bitch. I really wanted her to get what was coming to her. You sucked Penny Dreadful.
Movie 5: The Gravedancers - I don't really know what to say about this one. Before it started, I was informed that it was hilarious. The premise for it was dumb to say the least. But it was pretty funny. I'm not sure if it was intentionally funny, but it was. It was kind of a cross between what I'm guessing Feast is like (I really want to see that by the way) in that there was a lot of funny dialogue, and it was kind of like Ghostbusters in that some of the effects were really cheesy and 80's-like. There was like one scary part towards the beginning, but pretty much after that I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous everything was. I can't decide if it was done to be intentionally funny, but my guess is if it was, they wouldn't have added it to Horrorfest. So I was disappointed more in Horrorfest than the movie for this one.
Movie 6: Abandoned - The best movie of Horrorfest. This movie had pretty much everything on my list of rules for a scary movie. There was a lot of creepy stuff, and it was in a creepy environment. I don't want to give anything away because I liked it so much and it (and Reincarnation) are the two that I recommend of all of these. And probably Unrest. The ending was really freaky though. I'll say that.
Day 3
Movie 7: Wicked Little Things - This movie was ok, fairly scary. I guess for me it wasn't that scary because I didn't really think a lot of the stuff was scary once it was all explained. And then once it was all explained, there really wasn't a lot of tension left in the movie (in my opinion at least). Besides, we saw the scary little things really early in the movie. But seeing them eat people was hilarious. And awesome.
Movie 8: The Hamiltons - This movie disappointed me. I only watched part of the trailer online, but I saw what appeared to be incest and thought it looked like a winner. Er, uh. Seriously, I thought this could be good. And then it started out pretty well, and I liked the premise. But then it slowed down, and then I got annoyed. The ending was ok, but I was disappointed with how the movie was done. But it was by far not the worst movie I saw, and I would say it probably tied for 4th with WLT.
So there were 3 bad/disappointing ones, 2 good ones, and 2 that were still pretty good but not as good and 1 awesome one.
A couple things I learned from the weekend:
Better keep a flashlight on you. You never know when you're going to be lost in the dark in some sort of forest or basement or when your lights will go out due to ghosts. (Seriously, spirits turning out lights was totally overplayed) Might want to keep some extra batteries on you too, just in case.
If your heritage takes you to another country, you might want to take a buddy with you. Just saying.
'Doppelganger' is probably a word I don't want to hear in a scary movie, even if said doppelganger is creepy.
There was not enough killing in these movies. The death toll was miserably low. There were probaly only like 4 or 5 people killed per movie. Very disappointing.
Slow plots must have been a theme. We figured out the story about half an hour in, then the next half hour was miserably slow (for most), and sometimes even longer than that, and then the final half hour was hopefully when things picked up, but that didn't happen all the time.
I guess I'd say it was a successful weekend. I'm terribly desensitized to horror though, as basically through any killing scene I was laughing. There is probably something wrong with me.
Day 1
Movie 1: Dark Ride - From the previews I thought this one was kind of scary looking. Except from the 'ride' portion in the title, I thought it might be a movie like whatever that movie Paul Walker was in. You know, road trip, someone following you trying to kill you for no reason. In general, I would say this movie was pretty bad, but some of the effects were ok. And the kill scenes were pretty funny. And by funny I mean probably disturbing to most people, but I laughed a lot. Also, if you want to make a scary movie, I would say casting the catcher from The Sandlot is a bad move. Yet another bad scary movie with "dark" in the title.
Movie 2: Rinne: Reincarnation - The movie from Taka Shimizu. I was looking forward to this one, since it wasn't a shitty sequel to a good first movie, and it was one of the "Horror 6-pack" (as I've termed it) from the director. This movie wasn't really scary in the same way as The Grudge and there wasn't stuff jumping out scaring you, but there was a freaky looking doll, little creepy Asian kids, and a pretty cool ending that was also pretty weird.
Movie 3: Unrest - I'm not sure how I felt about this movie. On one hand, the main character really annoyed me. On the other hand, she was really hot, so I couldn't make up my mind. In this one we never saw the scary thing, so I guess a lot of the tension was pointless. But it was pretty creepy in general, if you think morgues and cadavers and dead things are creepy. And I do, so I thought it was pretty good.
Day 2
Movie 4: Penny Dreadful - They got the dreadful part right. This movie was terrible. This was in the same realm of Dark Water. Again, from the trailer I thought this might be like that shitty Paul Walker movie, but it was possibly worse. It was terribly boring. There was barely anything happening in it. It kind of reminded me of Phone Booth in that regard. Also, I hated the main character in this movie. She was such a whiny bitch. I really wanted her to get what was coming to her. You sucked Penny Dreadful.
Movie 5: The Gravedancers - I don't really know what to say about this one. Before it started, I was informed that it was hilarious. The premise for it was dumb to say the least. But it was pretty funny. I'm not sure if it was intentionally funny, but it was. It was kind of a cross between what I'm guessing Feast is like (I really want to see that by the way) in that there was a lot of funny dialogue, and it was kind of like Ghostbusters in that some of the effects were really cheesy and 80's-like. There was like one scary part towards the beginning, but pretty much after that I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous everything was. I can't decide if it was done to be intentionally funny, but my guess is if it was, they wouldn't have added it to Horrorfest. So I was disappointed more in Horrorfest than the movie for this one.
Movie 6: Abandoned - The best movie of Horrorfest. This movie had pretty much everything on my list of rules for a scary movie. There was a lot of creepy stuff, and it was in a creepy environment. I don't want to give anything away because I liked it so much and it (and Reincarnation) are the two that I recommend of all of these. And probably Unrest. The ending was really freaky though. I'll say that.
Day 3
Movie 7: Wicked Little Things - This movie was ok, fairly scary. I guess for me it wasn't that scary because I didn't really think a lot of the stuff was scary once it was all explained. And then once it was all explained, there really wasn't a lot of tension left in the movie (in my opinion at least). Besides, we saw the scary little things really early in the movie. But seeing them eat people was hilarious. And awesome.
Movie 8: The Hamiltons - This movie disappointed me. I only watched part of the trailer online, but I saw what appeared to be incest and thought it looked like a winner. Er, uh. Seriously, I thought this could be good. And then it started out pretty well, and I liked the premise. But then it slowed down, and then I got annoyed. The ending was ok, but I was disappointed with how the movie was done. But it was by far not the worst movie I saw, and I would say it probably tied for 4th with WLT.
So there were 3 bad/disappointing ones, 2 good ones, and 2 that were still pretty good but not as good and 1 awesome one.
A couple things I learned from the weekend:
Better keep a flashlight on you. You never know when you're going to be lost in the dark in some sort of forest or basement or when your lights will go out due to ghosts. (Seriously, spirits turning out lights was totally overplayed) Might want to keep some extra batteries on you too, just in case.
If your heritage takes you to another country, you might want to take a buddy with you. Just saying.
'Doppelganger' is probably a word I don't want to hear in a scary movie, even if said doppelganger is creepy.
There was not enough killing in these movies. The death toll was miserably low. There were probaly only like 4 or 5 people killed per movie. Very disappointing.
Slow plots must have been a theme. We figured out the story about half an hour in, then the next half hour was miserably slow (for most), and sometimes even longer than that, and then the final half hour was hopefully when things picked up, but that didn't happen all the time.
I guess I'd say it was a successful weekend. I'm terribly desensitized to horror though, as basically through any killing scene I was laughing. There is probably something wrong with me.
posted by Jtrouble at 9:00 AM
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