The ABCs of Death (2012)

So for the first real entry on this blog in well over a year I am totally not doing what I said I was going to when I gave you that list of things I’d be reviewing and strayed far and wildly into something TOTALLY NOT ON THE LIST. If you have a thing about lists, this probably just completely rubbed you the wrong way. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry, but also, seriously, lighten the hell up. Because this gem of a movie rolled into my hometown for ONE WEEKEND ONLY and I did the only sensible thing a creepy confection in my position could, flapped her hands wildly going “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD” and then proceeded to high-tail herself down to the only theater playing it. If you’re questioning this level of excitement, just what the fricking trailer, and if afterwards you’re still all Mr. “meh, whatever” … well then I don’t think this relationship is going to work after all, I’m sorry honey, we can discuss who gets the kids on which holiday.

Now tell me that doesn’t look magical to you. Or you know what. Don’t. Because you’ll make me angry, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I rip off my clothes and go on a path of destruction, mowing down people in my path, and knocking over furniture. I don’t actually get bigger or turn green or anything, I usually just come home tired and embarrassed, while my poor roommate tells the cops how sorry she is for my immature behavior and promises to try to make wear some sort of covering in public, and you know, stop punching children….

Wait… what was I talking about… and how did I get here? Oh yeah. Anyway, ANYWAY.

Here is the premise of the film at its most stripped down and basic: 26 film makers are given the task of each creating a film that has something to do with death, with the catch that it must also somehow relate to an assigned letter of the alphabet. These short films come to us from all corners of the globe and span a wide gamut of genres and subject matter; from the comical and camp, to downright artsy fartsy, from freaking disturbing, to the incredibly tragic, and then there’s a couple in there that you just sit, blinking slowly, and going “…. The fuck?”

I will not lie to you dear readers, not all of the shorts are good. In fact, some of them made this girl just sit there, scowling in contempt and making a disapproving clucking sound. However, I was at no point bored, nor did I zone out. Which is, frankly, a huge accomplishment, since I generally have such issues with spacing that I have on three separate occasions walked straight into sign poles, and each time it was so sadly ironic I would have laughed if not for the metal buzzing sound in my ears and the mother bitch of a headache, since they were ‘stop’, ‘no parking’, and ‘yield’, respectively. Hell, I zoned out halfway through writing this sentence.

It’s hard to really write a particularly succinct review about a movie that is a collection of shorts, especially when half the fun of them is trying to guess what word they’ve chosen for their assigned letter, and to the credit of the film makers, very few of them were an obvious choice. So here’s the thing; if you want a movie where you’re going to be constantly engaged by the material, then yeah, see it, totally see it. But if you’re prone to fainting or some other form of general sissarey (yes I just made that up, but it’s my word now, and I’m getting it copyrighted) you’re gonna want to take a pass on this one. Maybe go to the bigger theater down the road, catch that new Nicholas Sparks movie, that as far as I can tell is about a girl who cries a lot because she has to ride her bicycle around a quaint beach town.

Your delicate modern, sensibilities, will be offended, there's just no way around that, Gertrude, I'm sorry. Hell, at points my sensibilities were offended and that takes doing. But despite the fact that there are large clumps of this film that are offensive, and even occasionally hard to watch, I'm going out here and saying watch it. It takes chances, and generally speaking, I'm more offended by a movie that leans towards the safe and throws me something trite and predictable, than I am a movie that makes me queasy at points and at others makes me wonder if I'm actually just going mad very slowly. And sure, maybe I'm a little biased here, because when I saw it I had basically the perfect viewing experience  a midnight showing with only six other people, in an awesome, tiny art theater with ridiculously good popcorn. Maybe I would not have this level of affection for it if I'd just been sitting on my couch watching it. Maybe. But I would still respect the novelty of it. And that ought to count for something, right? No? Geez, don't be such a buzzkill...

Well, that's it for me, for now at least, but you can look for more of my slightly off-kilter views on things soon.
But now this girl is going to bed.

Until next time:
Hugs and kisses


♥
Spooky Pie

Insidious (2011)

Dear Insidious,

what in the seven hells am I going to do about you? I have such conflicting feelings about you. Let's get one thing straight, you are not, by any stretch of the imagination a good movie. You are most certainly the exact opposite of that. The problem is there were definitely things about you that I really liked, and I feel like you had the potential to be a good movie and you just sort of went "OH GOD! WE CAN'T BE HAVING NONE OF THAT!!!!" and just threw your hands up and went squealing all the way to the dumpster where this film inevitably ended up.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, as I'm like to do. I'll blame it on my long absence from this blog and just missing all my Spooky Dos so damn much.
(seriously kids, how have you been? Mama's sorry she hasn't checked in on you)




The premise of Insidious is initially a rather simple one. Laughably so. Like you would look at the synopsis and go "wow... because THAT'S never been done."

Renai and Josh Lambert are a young couple who have just moved into a new house with their three children Dalton, Foster, and baby Cali. The house is question, looks like one that I've seen at least 7 horror movies take place in, and so I immediately question their collective wisdom in moving into it. I mean really, the interior looks just like the freaking house that they shot House of the Devil in... which should have been a tip off for me, since I was just so fond of that movie.

Shortly after they move in all sorts unsettling things start happening: Doors open and close on their own, phantom voices start talking through the baby monitor, you know fun stuff. And then Renai and Josh's son Dalton falls into a coma with no medical reason behind it whatsoever. Renai gets progressively more hysterical, and justifiably so, and is convinced that everything horrible happening to them is because the house. Josh, however, poo poos the whole thing until Renai finally has a big fat hysterical melt down and then he changes his tune to "oh damn, maybe we should move."

... yeah. Maybe you should.

So they move into a significantly less creepy, and smaller house. Why they needed to live in a house with eighty rooms to begin with was totally beyond me, but hey, I didn't write this movie. And all seems to be going better for everyone, except that Renai starts seeing a whole NEW bunch of dead things, all of which seem concentrated around their son Dalton.

Long story short, they end up calling in paranormal experts that made me feel like I was watching The Ghostfacers spin off of Supernatural. (It's okay if you didn't get that reference, I still like you). And it turns out it isn't the house, or houses, that are haunted, it's THEIR SON, because no one saw that coming. And all the spirits are drawn to the fact that there is essentially and empty living person that they want to cram their fat selves inside and take a stroll.




So here's the problem. If that was just the movie I would have been totally cool with it. Sure, it's a little predictable, but hey, that's fine. But then it turns into SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY and the last third of the movie turns into this really convoluted story about astral projection and demons, and lots of little sub plots get introduced only to be promptly forgotten.

And I end up thinking "Why couldn't we have just stayed with the ghosts? I liked the ghosts! The ghosts were GOOD", and it's true, they are. There are some genuinely spooky scenes of the ghosts that remind me of why Thirteen Ghosts is such a guilty pleasure for me; the ghosts are so DAMN COOL.

Not to mention the fact that title sequence was actually pretty nifty. It felt like a complete homage to the supernatural horror films of the 1970's. So I actually got my hopes up way too high because I thought for a hot minute that Insidious was going to be a new awesome cult movie that felt like it was made thirty years ago. And they had a fairly decent cast, Rose Byrne is absolutely lovely and fragile as Renai, and while it's taken me forever to stop thinking of Patrick Wilson just as "that pedophile from Hard Candy", he didn't too bad either (and I warmed to him considerably after Watchmen). Plus Barbara Hershey and Lin Shaye, who is no stranger to the horror circuit.

IT HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL AND THAT IS WHAT MADE ME SO ANGRY!

I won't lie I actually yelled in the theater when this movie ended. That's how much just "OH WHAT????" it built up in me.

It could have been amazing, instead it just turned into a really really weak attempt to become M. Night Shyamalan's ugly stepsister. I mean, good grief Insidious! Get some self respect! Look at your life! Look at your choices!

It's like they were writing the script and got to the last one third and just all looked at each other and went

"Oh God! What do we do now???"

"Give the bitches some weird demon nonsense! Bitches love weird demon nonsense!"

Which is erroneous you guys. At least this bitch was impressed anyway. And few things annoy me more in a movie then wasted potential. And if you were going to just throw some nonsense in at the last minute, at least make it like, the Cthulu or something.... or, you know, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Okay, so I'm going to collect myself and take some deep breaths now. You kids be good until I come back.

Love and kisses,
♥
Spooky Pie

Season of the witch (2011)

Okay, okay. Right about now you're probably going "what? Another review? Within a week? But Spooky you never do this! Are you sick?"

Well kids, the answer to all your questions is "yes", unfortunately. My few remaining days of freedom before university starts back up and I manage to get a head cold.

But hey, there are few things that are better to do than to sit around in a movie theater drinking Coke Zero when you're just a bit under the weather. Me and carbonation are like this. So when the whole "Do you want to go see 'Season of the Witch'?" came up I was like:

"oh sure."

So here's the part where I have to put in the pre-note that despite how trendy people seem to find it these days to heap on the Nicolas Cage hate, I consider myself not standing with the haters on the left, because I don't care, I find the man entertaining.

Here's my second unpopular opinion, I actually kinda, sorta, maybe ... liked this movie. But please, hold your stones until the end kids.

And keep in mind all the good times we've had...

... Please?



First off, to clear up any possible misconceptions, this is not a re-make of the 1973 George A. Romero film of the same title. This one is set during the crusades, and most specifically, the witch trials. Oh yes, and we even open with a good old fashioned one - but at least while you know that the 'villain' of the film is the supposed which, there are no pretenses that the church is the paragon of virtue in this tale.

Which is sort of what introduces us to our main characters Hell Boy and Ghost Rider Felson and Behman, played by Ron Perlman and Nicolas cage, respectively. These fine lads are two knights of the church who have recently become disenfranchised with the supposed "Holy War"; and its tendency towards brutally killing innocents.

But, generally, the church looked on deserters about as kindly as they do witches and through a series of events they get coerced into escorting a supposed witch to an abbey where priests can perform a certain rite on her, because, oh yeah, she apparently is causing the Bubonic plague.

But our boys, they be chivalrous, so they only agree to go along if the girl gets fair trial. The merry little troupe is fleshed out by another knight, a boy who wants to grow up to be one, and priest who is, shock, a complete douche bag, and a merchant because he knows the land.

Along the way there are plenty of "is she a witch?" "Isn't she a witch", "Is she bad?" "Isn't she bad?". And lot's of Ron Perlman being a bad ass that you really ought to think a moment before trifling with.

Okay, so maybe not a very complex plot, but, you know, that can work sometimes.
And honestly, after my last foray into cinema with The Church I have to say that there is something to be said for a movie that makes sense and doesn't just leave me wailing: "WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED HERE?!?!?!" for two hours.



So I'm not sure if I should attribute it to the fact that sometimes I go to movies just to shut my brain off and be entertained, or maybe that I went into it with basically zero expectations; but I just couldn't hate this movie.

So yeah, it's not going to win any awards for being the most brilliant to ever grace the silver screen, but it does make a for a fun night.

I just realized that this was pretty short as far as my reviews go, but eh, it's better than just going on and on and on and on...

Also, I think that I need to watch something that has nothing to do with the freaking crusades next or I may well go daffy.

So that's all I got, I'm off to have a hot cuppa and watch the Buffy marathon that's running Chiller right now, and winge about like I'm on my death bed.

Because I believe that's standard protocol when you have a cold ... or something. Nobody tells me anything.

So until next time, hugs not drugs, tip your waitresses, you know the drill.

Hugs and Kisses,

♥
Spooky Pie

The Church (1989)

So, in the general spirit of thing, when Miss Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl announced that The Church was going to be the new film for Final Girl Film Club I decided to show my individualism by promptly hopping my spooky bum onto the bandwagon. Hush you, hush.

The trouble is, I watched said film club movie and then went "Wow ... what the Hell am I even going to say about this?"

What indeed, my darling Spooky Do's?

I've had almost 48 hours to digest this movie and I still have no idea what the hell it was I watched. I think the big problem was that it was a Dario Argento film, in the truest sense.

Now, you might be saying "But Spooky! Isn't Suspiria one of your favorite horror movies EVER?", and you're not wrong random person I don't know, it is. However, I think I may have been truly spoiled by the fact that Suspiria was my first Argento film. So, of course, I saw it, I adored it, I decided I needed to try and get my sugary little hands on as much more Argento as I could.

I mean, if the man was capable of the masterpiece that is Suspiria, his other works must be great too! Right?

After spending one of my coveted "apartment to myself" weekends watching such examples of his films as Deep Red and Opera, I can safely say that, no, no this isn't the case at all.

Argento somehow stumbled onto something beautiful and awe-inspiring with Suspiria, and true to the old adage, lightening didn't strike the same place twice. His other films struck me as largely plotless jumbles, with some occasional jarring music thrown in, and liberal amounts of thick, almost play-doh looking blood. Yes, he has a good eye, and yes each of his films has instances of absolutely gorgeous cinematography and framing, but if you remember my review of Parasomnia, you'll recall my sentiment that just making the movie pretty won't necessarily make me able to sit through it.

And I'm sorry to say, like the other aforementioned films, I found The Church to be much like that.



Okay, well here's the part where I try to explain the thin amount of plot that there was. Because, really kids, I did just feel like this was one huge jumble of "WHAT??? WHAT??? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?".

All right, here we go. So we start out with a bunch of knights who have apparently tracked down a village of witches? Maybe? This doesn't really get explained. One of the village girls offers the leader of the knights water, and he freaks the Hell out because it's tap and he only drinks imported bottled water from the Swiss Alps.

So him and all his apeshit knight friends kill the whole village, and throw them in a giant hole. Then one of the lead knight's advisers has the AMAZING (and by amazing, I mean incredibly stupid), that the only way to purify the land that this den of sin was they have to build a church right on top of it.

I don't get the logic, but hey I wasn't a bat-shit crazy person in the middle ages.

Also, I really felt like at some point it was just going to degenerate into the Spanish Inquisition.



But Monty Python may possibly have been too culturally accurate for this film. I'll let you take minute to soak that idea up.

Moving right along...

We cut to "modern times", or at least the eighties, and the titular church that was built atop the bodies of the non-Evian drinking hippies that the knights slaughtered.

The amazing Plastic Librarian, a.k.a Evan I-don't-have-a-last-name is starting his first day of work cataloging at the church. He seriously looks like a kind of deranged Ken doll. En route a girl restoring a fresco drops her art supplies on his head, so he asks her out.

This is my flirtation method too kids, someone throws things at me and I think "HOT DAMN!" Obviously, Evan, like me, still assumes that the romantic world still operates like it did in Elementary school and you have to wait for someone to hurl something at you before you can tell whether or not they like you.

Evan then makes his way to the library, where he meets Lottie, played by Asia Argento, Dario Argento's daughter, because for some reason he likes to cast her in really uncomfortable roles, all things considered. Lottie lives in the church because her father does ... something. He's a Sacristan? I'm afraid I'm showing my ignorance because I had NO IDEA what that was, but hey, whatever, I don't imagine it's going to come up much.



Evan ends up uncovering a text that promises him eternal life if he unlocks something beneath a stone with seven eyes. This, obviously, is going to end well. Because, apparently, under the stone is Argento's version of Whedon's Hellmouth.

yes, I know this pre-dates Buffy, but Buffy is A LOT better, so therefore I am going to give Joss the props here

So Evan unlocks the evil door, and get possessed.... I think. Or he just decides to be a pedophilic rape fiend for the fun of it. I don't know. The man is weird. But this is a little strange, because you really got the feeling that the film was going to be about Evan with-no-last-name, and the art supply throwing girl. But apparently Evan is just there to be a sweaty perverted device to move the film along.

Apparently, and I'm as shocked as you are here, the real main characters in The Church are Lottie, and Father Gus, the black priest and ONLY ATTRACTIVE MAN IN THE WHOLE MOVIE. I am supposing that the reason behind this is that him and Lottie are supposed to be examples of untainted good in the face of the evil leaking out of the hole under the church.

That's a bit confusing though. You know next to nothing about Father Gus, other than that he likes archery, and has really strange visions about a sprinting, dwarf version, of one of the extra's from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But okay, he's a priest, he gets some slack. But Lottie? The child is like twelve, and she sneaks out every night to do drinking, dancing, and I'm sure whoring. I'm pretty confused on why she should be a moral compass. But hey, what do I know, I didn't write this movie. Obviously, if I did it would star Eli Roth and Benedict Cumberbatch. Like all movies I would make.



Apparently when the church was created, it was made with some sort of self destruct function that would activate if the evil within the church were released. Well, that kicks off, and the church seals itself up. This traps all aforementioned people, as well as a bunch of kids on a field trip, a biker couple, a film crew doing a modeling shoot, and an old couple inside the church.

So then comes the choice; either activate the "kill switch" and destroy the church so that the evil doesn't destroy the outside world, or let it take its course, and it'll probably wipe out everything on earth.

While this pot is boiling, everyone in the church starts being effected by the evil and essentially going balls crazy. And here's where any sort of sane plot we might have had put up its hands and walked away in defeat.

Because from here on out, it's people hallucinating, stabbing other people with gate partitions, molesting each other, decapitating their spouses, and performing candlit satanic rites in the nude.

Is my earlier assessment of "What the Hell even just happened here?" beginning to make some sense?

I think my brain kind of checked out somewhere between the bizarre plastic-wrapped orgy and the man hallucinating that there is a giant fish trying to eat his face.

Like I said before:

WHAT?!

Dear God on a tuna melt, what was this all even about?

I don't know, I really just .... ack. I don't know at all.

But, like I said before it is pretty to look at. So, in fact, when I was going back to screencap it, and I just had my iTunes on, and the movie audio on mute it wasn't all that bad. While Argento misses the mark with a fair amount of things, the man knows how to set up a film so that it looks like a piece of art.

Usually I can sit down and figure out the message behind a horror film. Because they are a common used medium for such a thing. Look at the Romero zombie films and how full of social commentary they were, or even the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or films like Kairo and Suicide Circle which reflect Japan's concern with the increasing lack of connection the country's youth possesses with itself as well as as a whole.

If The Church had any sort of a message I will be damned if I could decipher it.

I'm not going to lie, I think I've run out of everything I can say about this movie other than just tons and tons of ellipses indicating awkward pauses as I open and close my mouth trying to figure out what to say about the damn thing.

I guess it's not a terrible movie, and if you wanted to put on your favorite CD and just have something to stare at, some of the visuals are pretty hypnotic, so that might not be a bad day.

But this girl's head still hurts from how much she was scratching it after watching this one. I'm going to have to go catch up on Dexter now or something to get rid of the weird taste that The Church left behind.

So, until next time,

Hugs and kisses kiddies, and stay in school

♥

Spooky Pie

Harvest Home (novel) - 1973

Yes kids, that's right, we have our first ever HORROR BOOK REVIEW here at TGDH! And it is none other that the extremely hyped up novel Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon.



I won't lie, when I found this at a used book sale (which are my Achilles heel, by the way, this girl finds it impossible to resist the lure of a good used book sale) I was *BEYOND* stoked. I had heard SO much about it, how terrifying it was, what an amazing story, and of course the "I think it's out of print, so good luck finding a copy, and if you do expect to pay hand over fist for it."

So imagine the ludicrous smugness that settled over my person upon finding it at said book sale, and then further only having to pay $1.50 for it. I felt proud, I felt mighty, I felt that I had good and stuck it to the man; and that always makes me far too pleased with myself.

So there I am. 'It's summer', says I, 'This is the ideal time for a good old fashioned 'scare the pants off you' type book'. Much like the tradition in Japan of beating the summer heat by sitting around and telling ghost stories, so you get the chills enough to forget that it is 100 Goddam degrees in the shade. So excited was your beloved Spooky Pie, SO EXCITED.

I finished this book last night, and I am not anywhere near as excited anymore.

Le Sigh.

But before I get into how this 'meant to be awesome' book made me want to start chewing on my desk out of annoyance and frustration, let me give you the general run down of what its about.

Harvest Home is the story of stereotypical, wholesome, American family, the Constantines. Father, Ned, is a miserable bureaucrat, married to dewy eyed June Cleaver-esque Beth, the daughter of a Preacher. Their daughter Kate is a fussy asthmatic, who, as far as I can tell, has never had a friend in her life.

When our tale begins Beth's over bearing Preacher-man dad has just kicked the bucket, and the Constantines are enduring the road trip back to New York from his funeral. During said road trip they take the scenic route and happen upon the quaint hamlet of Cornwall Coombe and decide that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY WHERE THEY MUST LIVE AND THEY WILL ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTIONS SO DON'T EVEN TRY TO TALK THEM OUT OF IT BECAUSE IT WON'T WORK. Lucky for them, there's an empty house, and after a spell they get the provincial locals to cave in and sell it.

Now that they live in the country side Ned no longer needs to make money or something and spends all his time painting, whilst Beth does... I don't know what Beth does. Maybe she lies down on her face for eight hours at a time. But everyone is so in love with the little town and their quaint, old fashioned practices.

Namely the multitude of ceremonies they have to celebrate the various stages in the cycle of the harvest, which ultimately culminates in a giant ceremony known as "Harvest Home", at the center of which are the two villagers who have been deemed the Harvest Lord and the Corn Maiden. You know, basically hillbilly prom court. Ned can't keep his nose out of others peoples business and he stumbles upon the "pagan" belief system that the people of Cornwall Coombe have, and their "terrifying" rituals they perform to insure the growth of the corn.

Basically:
* outsider comes into community
* outsider mocks natives' belief system
* outsider becomes obsessed with belied system
* outsider is given what for because he is a persistent bastard

I had a multitude of issues with this book. First, and foremost, it is written in first person, and the narration of Ned Constantine is the most self-involved pompous voice ever; which alone made it hard to get through. He is, APPARENTLY, not only a genius but sex on two legs because every woman wants to jump his unemployed bones. Everyone is a caricature - Ned is supposed to come across, I think, as some sort of Byronic hero, although he just seems like a douche bag. Beth is the ideal housewife who spends a lot of time putting a hand to her bosom and making declarations that start with "Oh Darling!". And of course, the village has all of its stereotypical players as well; there's the town slut, the town crazy, and of course, the weird-ass old woman who acts as Judge Judy and executioner for the community.

Then there's the over used tropes throughout the book, an ideal village with a dark secret... wait? That's been done before? When? Oh... 5789489737893478943987 other times? Huh... well, let's do it anyway.

Know what else we'll do? Let's have the whole village be a bunch of "Crazy ass Pagans" who do nothing but butcher people and have sex in Cornfields, because that's totally what they do right? Right?

Ugg.

This sort of crap is why a lot of people still assume that being Pagan equals being a Devil Worshiper. Wow. Just wow.

And this is yet another thing that made me think that if I were a feminist I would be up in arms about the portrayal of women in this book. Every woman is completely one dimensional, and all are thoroughly objectified and made out to be so much under the males. They are all simple minded creatures who have the singular goal of popping out babies and making food.

I might have been offended if the whole book weren't so damn ludicrous that if I got offended about everything in it that was worth getting offended about I probably would have gotten a brain hemorrhage.

Okay, okay, I'm getting a little irritable and long winded, so I'm going to wrap this up you guys.

If you can get past the narration, and the fact that much of the story has been done to death a thousand times, and pretty much always better, its an okay read. The "big reveal" is fairly weak, and Tryon seems to get confused about the mythology he's already set up in the book towards the end, because it basically double back on itself and becomes a giant contradiction.

Basically, I finished the book and went

"...meh."

Take that however you want guys.

The House of the Devil (2009)

My Goodness, what can I say about House of the Devil? I wanted to like it, I wanted SO BADLY to like it.

I loved the idea of a movie made in 2009, but in the style of the great wave of the more classic horror movies of the late seventies and eighties. The premise was a little cliche, but I figured, oh what the Hell, I'm game. And I largely wondered how on earth this movie had come out last year without me having heard of it.

Gentle Readers and Fellow Spooky-dos, I don't wonder about this any more. I don't want to say that there is nothing good about the movie, because that would simply not be true, however, this is a case in which the bad greatly outweighs the good and results in Epic Fail.

The basic premise of the movie is simple, one that is easy to relate to, even. Broke college student Samantha can barely make ends meet, so she picks up a baby sitting gig to try and generate a little cash flow. All right, understandable, lot's of people can get behind the broke college student thing, a lot of us have been there.

And in trying to make a seventies/eighties style horror film, the baby sitter angle is appropriate. Let's face it, some of the most iconic horror movies of that era were baby sitter movies; Halloween, When a Stranger calls, and Trick or Treats, just to name a few.

It's a good angle for horror, any girl who babysat as a teenager can tell you that it can be ridiculously creepy. Sure it's all fun and games while you're entertaining the kiddies, but send them to bed and as soon as you're alone with the TV you start getting paranoid. Every little noise is something in the house with you, every noise outside is something coming from you. Like I said before, fear you can relate to.

Further drawing on established horror angles, HOTD is set in a suitably creepy, enormous house. In the outskirts of Nowheresville, where no one can hear you scream.



However, once our heroine is at said house she is informed by an unnerving old man that she was hired to watch not a child, but his wife's elderly mother. This is when Samantha's friend tells her;

"the agreement was we would leave if the people were weird, this isn't weird, it's mental".
This seems to be setting up the movie to be good and chilly, I mean, come one, what's creepier than weird old people? And if you just said "Nothing", than seriously, you need to sit down and have movie night with Drag me to Hell, Rosemary's Baby, the original Friday the 13th, and Whatever happened to Baby Jane?. Then you and me can talk about how not at all scary old people are.

The trouble is that it all takes a sharp turn downhill from there on out. All of the action of the film is presented in the last 15 minutes, in a hurried slap-dashed frenzy. And before that it's over an hour of "Hey what was that noise?" and "Let's look like we're foreshadowing that something really creepy is about to happen, and then not actually do anything." While that's all going on they proceed to have Samantha do REALLY foolish things, like run around the house blaring music on her headphones. Any paranoid babysitter will tell you, you DO NOT want to wear headphones. Headphones block out the footsteps of the person coming to kill you.

But as I said before, the movie is not without merits. Some of the camera work is downright genius. It intentionally filmed to be grainy and slightly yellowed, so you really feel like you're watching something that has a few decades on it. And a fair number of the shots are filmed in strange, almost clandestine frames. There aren't any first person type shots, most shots of Samantha are filmed in such a way as to make the viewer feel almost voyeuristic. It's like you are put in the perspective of the murderers, stalking the girl through the house.



And Samantha is a very sympathetic character. She's real, she makes real person decisions, she isn't perfect (she is in fact quite the little germaphobe, earning her brownie points with yours truly, who is a bit of one as well.)

Samantha is clever, she doesn't got through the movie shrieking or begging to be saved, she does her best to save herself. And I respect that. I only wish that this respectable of a character was not inside such a mess of a film.

Once the film ended I basically said "... okay."

There is an attempt at a Brian DePalma-esque gotcha ending, but it falls flat, much like the "horror" in the movie once its actually revealed.

I don't know you guys, I just don't know. I hope the next movie I write about here is one that I really like.



wow, look at that, turns out I actually qualify for The Final Girl Film Club with this humble review and I didn't even realize it oooooooh!!!