Hypnotic | 2021 Halloween Movies

I haven’t written a review in a couple of days because I have been extremely disappointed in the spooky movies recently. While a lot of the Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movies are boring, the Halloween fare lately has just been bad. I might try to squeeze in two extra reviews over the next few days in order to make up for the two days I’ve missed but, to be honest, that will depend on the quality of the movies I find. Then again, maybe I’ll give in and write the bad reviews anyway. Until then, here’s one of Netflix’s newest releases.

Hypnotic is about a woman named Jenn (Kate Siegel) who is feeling stuck in life. She doesn’t have a job currently and she suffers from depression after the death of her child and subsequent collapse of her romantic relationship with Brian (Jaime M. Callica). She turns to psychiatrist Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara). Dr. Meade hypnotizes Jenn in order to help her overcome her troubles. But this is only the beginning of her troubles.

As I said before, boring movies are different from bad movies. This one is just boring. Before the movie even reaches the halfway mark, we know what is going to happen. Thriller movies are only thrilling when you don’t know what is going to happen next. The suspense comes from knowing something bad will happen but not knowing what that something is or when it will happen. Hypnotic spells it out for you. Even if it didn’t tell you up front what was going to happen, this plot has been done before. Multiple times.

The sad part of this movie being boring is that it actually has a decent cast. Kate Siegel was amazing in Midnight Mass, Jason O’Mara was in the acclaimed Amazon Prime series The Man In The High Castle, and Dulé Hill’s career is way longer than any of us realize. These are people that could have some stunning things with a better script. It makes me sad that their talents were wasted.

Needless to say, you shouldn’t watch Hypnotic. Go watch literally anything else. You’ll thank me later.

Till Death | 2021 Halloween Movies

Till Death actually came out back in July 2021. But it is more of a thriller than most of the October releases so we’re going to look at it anyway.

Emma (Megan Fox) is unhappily married to Mark (Eoin Macken). She’s been cheating on him with his employee, Tom (Ami Ameen). On their anniversary, Mark takes Emma to a secluded lake house. They have a fairly nice evening but when Emma wakes up the next morning, she finds herself handcuffed to Mark. Mark then shoots himself in the head, leaving Emma handcuffed to his corpse. Besides having to drag around her dead husband’s body, Emma also has to avoid being killed by the men Mark hired to murder her.

When I first heard about Till Death, I wrote it off as one of those terrible movies where the woman gets kidnapped and does stupid things to try to get out of the situation. (I’m looking at you, Secret Obsession.) Boy, was I wrong. Fox’s Emma is smart and powerful. She manages to drag Mark’s stupid body all over the place and, as any good true crime fan will tell you, corpses are heavy. At no point does she give in or just sit and wait for someone to save her. She is always looking for a way to fix her situation.

I honestly don’t want to talk too much about this movie. I really think that everyone should watch it. Especially women. Most of the time women are portrayed as victims or someone who needs to be saved. Emma proves that women are neither. Though maybe we should all learn how to pick a handcuff lock, just in case.

Night Teeth | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix has been all over the place this year. We’ve seen good movies, terrible movies, foreign movies, and things that want to be movies but aren’t. But we haven’t had a monster movie, per se. No One Gets Out Alive is the closest we have come. As you can see from the poster, Night Teeth is a vampire movie. Is it a good one though?

In the Los Angeles area, vampires have co-existed peacefully with humans thanks to a centuries old truce that says vampires can only feed on people that consent. Victor (Alfie Allen) is a vampire that has grown bored of the truce. Intending to kill all of the vampires in power, he sends his girlfriend, Zoe (Lucy Fry), and her best friend, Blaire (Debby Ryan), into Los Angeles as a distraction. The girls hire peacekeeper Jay (Raúl Castillo) to drive them for the night but Jay has to save his girlfriend from Victor. Jay’s brother, Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr), takes his place. Benny didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

I’m a little confused about what to say about Night Teeth. As a movie, it was good. But it wasn’t a good vampire movie. A lot of the actiony parts of the movie either took place off-screen or far in the background of the shot. There aren’t even a lot of scenes of drinking blood. Well, there’s scenes of drinking blood from glasses but there’s only one real scene of vampires drinking from a human. It’s almost like the vampire part of the story was an after-thought.

Instead of an action-packed vampire thriller, we are given a romantic drama. I would argue that the main plot of the story is the growing affection between Blaire and Benny. The story really is a little Romeo & Juliet-ish. Coming at it from that direction, it is a decent movie. But if they were going for a romantic movie, there should have been a bit more romance in it. There’s a lot of like half-glances and smirky smiles at each other with only one actual kissing scene. I just think they should have tried harder to show each other that they were interested instead of spending all their time hiding it from Zoe.

It’s a fine movie to watch if you have nothing else to do. Just be warned that it is a vampire movie without any real bite to it. Well, there is a cameo from Megan Fox. I guess that is something…

A Tale Dark & Grimm | 2021 Halloween Movies

I enjoy reading the non-Disneyfied versions of fairy tales. When I saw there was a Grimm brothers-related series coming to Netflix this year, I was pretty darn excited. But did it live up to my own internal hype?

A Tale Dark & Grimm is an animated series based on a book of the same name. Hansel (Andre Robinson) and Gretel (Raini Rodriguez) run away from home only to find themselves involved in a number of other stories. Each story somehow gets worse for them, though this makes them stronger as people. And they will need their combined strength when their kingdom is attacked by a dragon!

The series lasts for 10-episodes, which feels way too few for all of the stories the writers are trying to fit in. Each episode is a separate story, for the most part. The last half of the series ditches the stand-alone story format in favor of tying everything together for the big ending. While I appreciate the writers doing their best to bring all of the characters together, I was really enjoying the stand-alone stories. It was interesting to see Hansel and Gretel take part in other stories unrelated to them.

That said, A Tale Dark & Grimm was a highly enjoyable series. It did keep the dark aspect of each story but it handled the more gory parts of the story in a way that wouldn’t frighten children. Usually in a shadow puppet-type of way. Not that this is intended for small children. It is rated TV-Y7, meaning it’s aimed at children older than 7, which is fair but I would probably go with a 9-10 year range instead. There are a few teasers and trailers on the Netflix website. I would recommend watching those first and deciding if your particular child can handle the content.

Lamb | 2021 Halloween Movies

What the hell did I just watch….

Lamb is an Icelandic supernatural…horror movie? Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are sheep farmers in the middle of nowhere. One of their pregnant sheep gives birth to something extraordinary and the couple decide to raise it as their own child. Ingvar’s brother, Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), moves in with them but is disturbed by their sheep-child, Ada. At first, Pétur tries to kill Ada. Instead, he somehow finds himself beginning to care for the child. It isn’t until Pétur attempts to blackmail Maria into having sex with him that Maria kicks him out of the house. While she is taking Pétur to the bus, Ingvar and Ada take a walk into the countryside to fix their broken tractor. On the way, they meet Ada’s true father, which devastates the entire family.

I fully understand that foreign films are very different from American films. I have talked about that a couple of times already this year. Lamb is something completely and totally different from everything else I have seen. We aren’t given any explanations for anything. All we get are vague references that we have to extract information from . Even at the very end when we are supposedly learning Ada’s parentage, we see him but that is it. There’s no explanation about what he is or where he came from. He’s just…there.

The one good thing I can say about the movie are the graphics were pretty good. The Ada character is disturbing in a way that she is supposed to be. I’m still not completely sure how they pulled it off. Was it all CGI? Was it a hybrid of CGI and practical effects? Did the use black magic?

Unless you are really into arthouse foreign films, I would recommend you skip this one. There isn’t a lot of drama or action. It is VERY slow. And there is no real payoff. This very well may be on the bottom of my Halloween list this year.

The Medium | 2021 Halloween Movies

Shudder hasn’t had a lot of new releases this year. The first one was V/H/S/94. This time, they have given us the Thai film The Medium. Let’s see if Shudder handles foreign films better than Netflix.

Nim (Sawanee Utoomma) is a shaman in the Isan region of Thailand. When she attends her brother-in-law’s funeral, she finds her niece, Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech), acting strangely. Even though Mink’s mother/Nim’s sister, Noi (Sirani Yankittikan), doesn’t want anything to do with shamans, she needs Nim’s help to cure Mink. Is it really the goddess Ba Yan calling Mink to the shaman life or is it something more sinister?

When I make lists of movies I’m going to review, I try to do as little reading on the movie itself as possible. I look up when it is coming out and where I can watch it. So when The Medium started and it looked a lot like an actual documentary, I thought I messed up. (Not that I am averse to documentaries, I watch a lot of them. It’s just not the Halloween vibe I’m going for with these reviews.) But, no, this isn’t a documentary. It is a really, really good documentary-style. Totally had me fooled.

Thanks to the pseudo-documentary style, I was completely pulled into the movie at the beginning. I cared a lot about Nim and I thought the movie was going to center around her. It doesn’t. Not at all. Nim is, at best, a third tier character. Don’t get me wrong, Nim is very important and moves a lot of the story along. But The Medium, at it’s core, is about Mink, Noi, and Noi’s relationship to religion. Everything and everyone else is secondary to those themes.

The Medium was such a good movie. I did think the ending was a little weak but I’m going to chalk that up to societal differences. I know that, in very broad and general terms, Asian media prefers to have more open endings where Western media likes to tie all of the plotlines up in a nice little bow. With that said, The Medium is definitely left enough open for a sequel or a Paranormal Activity-type of series of movies. I would love to see another movie that takes place in this universe.

There is no need to ask me if you should watch this. Yes, the answer is yes. Go watch it tonight.

Fever Dream | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix has given us another international psychological thriller. Fever Dream is an adaptation of a 2014 novel by Samanta Schweblin, who also co-wrote the script. The movie is co-written by an Argentinian writer and the Peruvian director; it was filmed in Chile and the world premiere was held in Spain. I have no idea which country wants to lay claim to the movie so we’re just going to classify it as Spanish.

Amanda (Maria Valverde) moves to a small village with her daughter, Nina (Guillermina Sorribes Liotta). Soon after moving in, she meets Carola (Dolores Fonzi) who brings her water as the tap water is undrinkable. Carola tells Amanda about her son, David (Marcelo Michinaux) but notes that Nina should not play with him. Weird health issues begin happening to Amanda that she is unable to explain. A voice keeps telling her to pay attention to the details. It’s the things that go unnoticed that matter the most.

This movie is so difficult to explain. It is basically told entirely as a flashback but not in a way that we know it’s a flashback. As a result, very little is explained outright. There are things in the background that you need to pay attention to in order to grasp the reality of the situation. It doesn’t help that there are some supernatural elements in play as well.

Spoilers - I don’t know how to really talk about the movie without revealing the ending. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading here and go watch the movie. - Spoilers coming!

Throughout the movie, there are a lot of references to water and how the children of the village are all deformed. We find out at the very end that the company Carola works for is spraying pesticides in the fields, which is leeching into the water supply. Not only are the children deformed from it, but Amanda and Nina get very sick from it. (Enter supernatural soul-swapping stuff…I don’t want to talk about that though.)

The entire movie takes place after Amanda has gotten sick and Carola’s son, David, is talking her through her memories. David had gotten deathly ill from the nearby river and a local village (witch) doctor saved him by sending half of his soul away with the poison while another soul would take over his body. That part makes no sense, which is why I’m not going to talk about it. It is unclear exactly when David is talking to Amanda or why it’s him talking her through everything. But when Nina gets sick, that village doctor puts half of her soul into David so now actual David is half-David/half-Nina? I don’t understand it.

Anyway, the movie did move very slowly. I think the rest of the world is way more patient that the United States. I think this would have bored the pants off of more people. However, with the exception of the stupid supernatural soul-swapping aspect, I did like the message of the movie. I think maybe they should have had David outright die and it was his spirit walking Amanda through the events. It also would have given Carola’s motives more nuance.

I want to recommend watching Fever Dream but only if you can handle the pacing. There are a lot of repeated scenes as David tries to get Amanda to understand what she remembers. But I do think the message is very important.

Halloween Kills | 2021 Halloween Movies

Guess who’s back. Back again. Michael’s back. Don’t tell anyone because he will probably murder you and your family and your friends and your little dog too.

Halloween Kills is a direct sequel to the 2018 Halloween movie. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) believe they have finally killed Michael (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle). They are wrong. Michael escape from Laurie’s burning house and goes on another killing spree. This time the townspeople, led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), have gathered together to hunt down Michael and kill him themselves.

While I am familiar with the Halloween franchise, I’ve never actually watched any of the movies. Well, until I watched the 2018 movie the other night in order to prepare to watch this one. But this does mean that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the specifics of the Michael character. It did lead to a little bit of confusion on my part during the last third or so of Halloween Kills.

In comparison to the 2018 movie, this one is bloodier. The killing starts almost immediately and the body count is immense. There are also a few instances where Michael uses weird (to me, anyway) objects for the murder and he moves the bodies afterward. My husband claims Michael has done that in past movies so it is not out of character for him. However, we didn’t see any of that in the previous movie so it is weird to me.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie. Considering it is the middle of a trilogy, it fulfills all of the requirements to bring the story back together, keep it going, and add new dimensions to the plot. It will be interesting to see if they do wrap up everything with next year’s Halloween Ends or if they will continue to make Halloween movies forever.

If you do decide to watch this, and I think you should, you will need to watch the 2018 movie first. This movie begins immediately after that one and you will definitely be lost without knowing those events. However, it is not the best Halloween movie out there this year. It is probably the best slasher movie, if you are into that, but there are better spooky movies that came out if you’d rather spend your time not bathed in gushing blood.

The Chestnut Man | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix is really opening itself up to the international movie world. In addition to the South Korean Squid Game series, the streaming service also gives us the Danish The Chestnut Man series. While they are both Netflix-funded series outside of the US, they couldn’t be more different.

In a Copenhagen suburb, a woman is found brutally murdered. One of the main pieces of evidence the police have to work with is a small figure of a man made of chestnuts hanging from a nearby tree. This chestnut man links the murder with the disappearance of a child a year earlier. How does all of this fit together?

Once again, I watched this series dubbed in English instead of the original Danish language. While I don’t think the dub was particularly good, I don’t know that it changed my opinion of the show.

I think the best part of the series was the acting. Both Danica Curcic as the main detective, Naia Thulin, and her partner, Mark Hess, played by Mikkel Boe Følsgaard were so good. You could feel everything they were going through, both professionally and personally. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but the bad guy was also portrayed very well.

Unfortunately, the bad part of the series, in my opinion, is the pacing. Maybe this is a European thing but the show started so slowly. It took me a couple of days just to get through the first two episodes. Once you get past episode three, though? The case picks up and it’s difficult to stop watching. Since the show is only six episodes long, it kinda sucks that the first 1/3 of it is so slow. Maybe if there were some more dramatic cliffhangers at the end of each episode, I would have been drawn in a bit more in the beginning.

The only other issue I had is actually with Netflix and not the show itself. Netflix put this on their list of Halloween thriller movies for 2021. While the show is listed as a psychological thriller, it wasn’t particularly thrilling. It felt more like a police procedural show like Law & Order or NYPD Blue. I don’t think this should have been marketed as a Halloween release. People tend to expect a lot of Halloween fare.

If you enjoy series from outside the US, you would probably like this. But if you are used to American television, you might end up very bored. I do think it is worth a watch if you can power through the slow times.

Muppets Haunted Mansion | 2021 Halloween Movies

The Muppets have had a long career. Yet they have never released a Halloween special. I suppose the past year and a half has been scary for everyone because here is their very first Halloween special!

Loosely based on the Haunted Mansion ride at the Disney parks, the story begins with Gonzo going to a party in honor of his favorite magician, the Great MacGuffin. Pepe the King Prawn goes along anxious to meet some ladies. When they arrive at the mansion, they are told that the mansion is haunted and no one ever leaves. However, if they can survive one night, they will be able to leave. Otherwise, they will be trapped there forever.

As a fan of the Haunted Mansion ride, it was fun to see all of the parts of the attraction interact with each other. Granted, this isn’t the exact ride. Miss Piggy portrays the fortune teller head in the crystal ball, Will Arnett plays the Host, Taraji P. Henson plays The Bride, etc. But I enjoyed the interpretations of the animatronics. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out where in the ride each character “lived.”

There, honestly, isn’t a whole lot to say about the special. It’s pretty typical Muppets fare, except this time it’s centered around Gonzo instead of Kermit and Piggy. The human actors were good. Darren Criss was very funny as The Caretaker. Will Arnett is always funny. I think the only thing I didn’t like about the show was that the credits went by way too fast for me to see who all was in it. There are some quick scenes - the Singing Busts, for example - that went by too fast for me to identify everyone and then the credits went by too fast as well. But that is what they make the internet for. I can look that up easily.

This is an easy special to recommend. If you like the Muppets or the Haunted Mansion ride, you are likely to love the special. If you are an old fuddy duddy stick in the mud, there are plenty of other things for you to watch. The Muppets are awesome.