Raven's Hollow | Halloween 2022

Raven’s Hollow is the horror movie for all of the Edgar Allan Poe fans out there. The movie mostly revolves around Poe’s famous poem, The Raven, but there are some references to his other works.

In the autumn of 1930, West Point military cadet Edgar Allan Poe (William Moseley) is on a training exercise with four other cadets. The group finds an eviscerated man on a rack in the middle of nowhere. Before he dies, the man whispers one word to Poe, “raven.” Poe assumes this is a reference to the nearby village Raven’s Hollow so the men travel there to find the murderer. Unfortunately, the military cadets are not ready for the secrets hidden in the Hollow.

Last year, Shudder gave us some of my favorite movies of the season. Horror Noire, The Medium, V/H/S/94. This year, the movies have seemed very lackluster. With the exclusion of Sissy, I haven’t liked anything from Shudder. While Raven’s Hollow isn’t terrible or confusing, it isn’t great either. It felt like the entire point of the movie was to try to shove as many Poe references in as possible. The movie would have been much better if they had just pulled the key elements from The Raven poem and twisted them to fit into the horror story they were building. It would have been easy to take West Point cadet Poe and have him experience elements from the poem without having to include many of the other characters.

I believe most people will pick Hollow apart for its…not great acting. Maybe I have seen too many terrible films but I didn’t think the acting was quite that bad. Instead, I kept getting distracted by the references to Poe’s other works. It made me second guess my knowledge of The Raven. Then again, if you aren’t particularly familiar with Poe’s works outside of The Raven, this probably wouldn’t be an issue for you.

Should you watch it? It is probably worth a go. There are some very good scenes that I wish were fleshed out a little bit more but are still quite beautiful as they currently are. Don’t go in expecting too much, though. We’re looking at like a 5 out of 10 movie here. There are definite places for improvement but it’s not a complete waste of time either.

Hellraiser | Halloween 2022

I never watched the original Hellraiser. As a matter of fact, all I really know about the movie is the main villain is Pinhead. Until I wrote this review, I didn’t even know that wasn’t actually the character’s name. It was just something the fans called him. Interesting. Anyway, I’m simply noting that I know nothing about the original movie or its franchise. I’m going into the 2022 version a complete newbie.

There is a puzzle box where someone dies every time its configuration changes. Six years after millionaire Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic) solves the final puzzle and mysteriously disappears, recovering drug addict Riley (Odessa A’zion) and her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) steal the puzzle box from a safe in an abandoned warehouse. As Riley begins to solve the puzzle box, people begin to disappear. By the time she realizes that the box is killing people, it may be too late to do anything about it.

Maybe modern horror movies have spoiled me too much. I thought this version of Hellraiser was boring. So there are supposed to be six deaths/sacrifices to the puzzle box. We know of five deaths, two of which happen off-screen and we only hear about them, when Riley is offered the Final Prize. I sat here at my desk counting and recounting the deaths to try to figure out who I missed. My husband, who is a big horror movie fan, simply replied with “Horror movie logic.” It annoys me when a movie gives us its rules then proceeds to break them. I’m willing to believe that a group of terrifying beings require blood sacrifices in order to gift someone a messed up version of a wish. But when you break the rules you set about those blood sacrifices, you have effectively taken me out of the suspension of disbelief.

I wish I could say that the visual effects made up for the lack of stability in the plot. There are one or two pretty cool scenes and Voight’s mansion is also pretty cool. The makeup for a couple of the Cenobites was interesting but that is about it. For the most part, like every other modern movie, it is too dark to see much of anything happening. I know movie people like to blame modern televisions but I cannot believe that absolutely everyone has their televisions on the “wrong settings” that result in completely pitch black scenes. Directors and editors need to figure out what they are doing wrong and fix it. It makes me dislike your product the more I consume it.

If you are a fan of the original Hellraiser, you might get some enjoyment out of this remake. My husband didn’t think it was terrible. Personally, I didn’t like it. I would much rather watch Sissy or Lou.

Sissy | Halloween 2022

An influencer, a childhood friend, and a childhood bully. The perfect combination for a night of…well, murder. It’s spooky season. We knew this was going to end in murder.

Cecilia (Aisha Dee) is a mental health influencer. While out shopping, she runs into her best friend from childhood, Emma (Hannah Barlow). Emma invites Cecilia, formerly known as Sissy, to join her new friends at a bachelorette weekend in the country. Unbeknownst to Cecilia, Emma is still friends with Alex (Emily De Margheriti), Cecilia’s childhood bully. The weekend takes a dark turn when Alex continues to bully Cecilia and no one steps in to stop her.

Both my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed Sissy. The way that we got to see all of the ways that Emma bullied Cecilia, both in childhood and as an adult, was brilliant. It also highlighted poor Cecilia’s descent into madness. She wasn’t a psychopath, she wasn’t out for revenge, she just wanted the bullying to stop. Alex even got Emma’s new friends, Jamie (Daniel Monks) and Tracey (Yerin Ha), to participate in the bullying, even though they thought Cecilia couldn’t hear them. After all of this torment and trauma, Cecilia’s actions were not surprising. As a matter of fact, my husband and I agreed that there was only one person that didn’t deserve their bloody fate. No, I’m not going to spoil which one it was. I’ll let you watch the movie and guess yourself.

And, yes, I think you should watch Sissy. It does get bloody and a bit gory but it’s not prolonged gore. You can avert your eyes for a few seconds and still not miss any of the story. I’m not sure that the writers intended this to be an anti-bullying story. I think we’re supposed to feel bad for the victims. But I think this is a wonderful way to show people that they shouldn’t bully other people. You never know if the bullied person is going to finally go on the attack.

X | Movie Review

My husband and I watched X awhile ago. Originally, I wasn’t planning on writing a review for it, but then the sequel came out and I figured I might as well review them both.

The year is 1979. A group of filmmakers travels to a farmhouse in Texas to film a new pornographic movie. Their movie, The Farmer’s Daughter, is directed by Wayne Gilroy (Martin Henderson) and stars Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Scott Mescudi). Wayne’s girlfriend, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), will also appear in the film. However, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) is only there to help her director boyfriend, RJ (Owen Campbell). That is, until she gets drawn in by the allure of the sex scenes. Then she wants to take part as well. Meanwhile, Howard (Stephen Ure), the owner of the farmhouse, is rather mean to the group. But it’s his wife, Pearl (Mia Goth), that they really need to avoid.

Like most A24 films, X is an unusual type of movie. Even though there are movies about making porn movies, they don’t quite follow the same format as X. We do see sex scenes (there is only one scene of full frontal nudity and it’s not related to The Farmer’s Daughter) but, for the most part, they don’t come across as sexy. They come across as almost robotic, which is probably pretty accurate for the porn industry. Something that needs to be done in order to become a rich and famous star.

In addition, the villain in this slasher film isn’t someone who can chase young adults across a farm in order to murder them. And still, most of the cast still ends up dead. It’s an interesting twist on the slasher genre of horror movie that definitely keeps you on your toes. Just when you think that the killer can’t possibly do something, that something happens anyway.

While I want to recommend X, it’s a difficult movie to actually recommend. It’s one of those movies that people will either love or hate. It is A24, after all. With that said, this is the middle film of a trilogy. The prequel, Pearl, came out on September 16 and the sequel, Maxxxine, will be coming out next year. You might want to wait until all three movies are out before watching this one.

We Need To Do Something | 2021 Halloween Movies

We Need To Do Something is an independent movie release on September 3, 2021. It was available both in theaters and streaming via video on demand. I was able to buy it on Amazon Prime for about $15. (You can rent it for like $7 if you don’t want to buy it.)

The plot for the movie is simple: A family of 4 gets trapped in their bathroom during a large thunderstorm. That’s it. That’s the whole plot. It’s not a lot to work with.

When I was looking at lists of scary movies released this year, Something sounded like it could be an interesting take on family dynamics. Unfortunately, the movie relies too much on the audience’s imagination. There are ways you can make a movie scary without showing the monster but you have to give us something to go on. All we get is family in-fighting, people describing things they see outside the bathroom, and vague flashbacks that might be the reason everything is happening.

And that is where the main problem lies - we don’t know what is happening. We don’t know how many days have passed since the family got stuck. They start fighting VERY quickly. It’s possible this whole movie takes place in 24 hours and we would never know. We also don’t know what terrible things are outside the door. The family is stuck because a tree fell on their house, blocking the bathroom door. (It occurs to me that every bathroom door that I know opens inward so the family wouldn’t have gotten stuck. Let me know if your bathroom door opens outward.) A couple of the family members, mostly the son and dad, make references to things they see outside the door but we only get a few sounds that don’t really match the descriptions and a bloody tongue. It’s not enough to allow us to decide what is actually outside.

On top of that, the story tries to give us a reason all of this is happening. However, they don’t really show us how the actions caused the consequences. Now, I get that this was filmed during Covid-19 so the cast was kept very small and they were confined to a soundstage. But we needed something more. It could have been a newspaper article talking about some of the events that Melissa (Sierra McCormick), the daughter, says happened. She says that one of her classmates died but her parents know nothing about it? That seems unlikely. As it is, we barely know the outside world exists.

To be honest, Something isn’t worth watching. It’s 97 minutes of boring nothingness. There are better ways to spend your time. Like maybe watching paint dry.

The Lost Boys 2

For those of us old enough to remember the 80s, The Lost Boys was a pretty decent vampire movie despite starring both of the Coreys. That would be Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. Well, the Coreys and the vampires are back in Lost Boys 2 - The Tribe. I expect a lot of cheesiness and bad acting from the Coreys.