First-time viewings are indicated with an ^
[Show spoiler]09/04/24: Blink Twice ^ (2024): 
Shaun Of The Dead (2004): 
09/05/24: Beetlejuice (1988):
09/06/24: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ^ (2024):
09/07/24: Jaws (1975): Jaws 2 (1978):
09/11/24: The Front Room ^ (2024): [ZERO SKULLS]
09/13/24: Speak No Evil ^ (2024):
09/18/24: Sweet Sixteen ^ (1983): Soul Survivors ^ (2001):
09/20/24: The Substance ^ (2024):
09/22/24: Fright ^ (1971):
09/25/24: Never Let Go ^ (2024):
9/27/24: Terrifier ^ (2016):
09/28/24: Terrifier 2 ^ (2022):
09/30/24: Tarot ^ (2024):
10/01/24: Fear In The Night ^ (1972): Fear No Evil ^ (1981): Werewolves On Wheels ^ (1971):
10/02/24: Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker ^ (1981): Screams Of A Winter Night ^ (1979): The Last Horror Film ^ (1982):
10/03/24: ParaNorman (2012): Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956):
10/04/24: The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935): Corpse Bride (2005): The Unseen (1980):
10/05/24: The Horror Of Frankenstein ^ (1970): Lust For A Vampire ^ (1971): M3gan (2023):
10/06/24: Freaky (2020): Terror Circus ^ (1973):
10/07/24: The Legend Of Hell House (1973): Oculus (2013):
10/08/24: Patrick (1978): Night Of The Demons (1988):
10/09/24: The Funhouse (1981): Hell Fest (2018): Lucky Bastard ^ (2013):
10/10/24: And Soon The Darkness ^ (1970): The Manitou (1978): ( for unintentional amusement)
10/11/24: Terrifier 3 ^ (2024): Five Nights At Freddy's ^ (2023):
10/12/24: The Wolfman (2010): Invasion Of The Bee Girls ^ (1973):
10/13/24: The Deliverance ^ (2024):
10/14/24: Nope (2022): Zombeavers ^ (2014):
10/15/24: Smile (2022): The Convent ^ (2000):
10/16/24: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993): Frankenweenie (2012): Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005):
10/17/24: The Ring (2002): Piranha 3DD ^ (2012):
10/18/24: The Ward (2010): Smile 2 ^ (2024): Black Friday ^ (2021): American Werewolf In Paris ^ (1997):
10/19/24: Talk To Me (2023): Them! (1954):
10/20/24: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983): Needful Things (1993): Inferno ^ (1980): Dario Argento's Dracula ^ (2013):
10/21/24: Stagefright ^ (1987): Venom ^ (1981):
10/22/24: Maniac Cop ^ (1988): A Nightmare On Elm St. (1984):
10/23/34: The Haunting (1963): The Innocents (1961): Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark ^ (1988): Vamps ^ (2012):
10/24/24: Blacula (1972): Dark Shadows (2012): From A Whisper To A Scream ^ (1987): Deadtime Stories ^ (1986):
10/25/24: Man's Best Friend (1993): Monkey Shines: An Experiment In Fear (1988):
10/26/24: Don't Move ^ (2024): Last Night In Soho (2021):
10/27/24: We Summon The Darkness ^ (2020): The Spell (1977):
10/28/24: Sleepy Hollow (1999): The Autopsy Of Jane Doe ^ (2016):
10/29/24: One Cut Of The Dead (2017): The Blair Witch Project (1999):
10/30/24:
I Am Sam...
-
Drag Me To Hell (2009):
-
Darkman (1990):
A spin through the Raimiverse in today's double feature.
Drag Me To Hell stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, an ambitious, upwardly mobile young woman working in a bank who has her eye on the assistant manager position when she's presented with a key opportunity to prove she has the stuff to make the tough decisions. When elderly Mrs. Ganush (a cadaverous Lorna Raver) comes in to request another extension on her mortgage. Christine makes the decision to deny her, and Mrs. Ganush makes a spectacle of herself, literally groveling on her knees in front of an embarrassed Christine. After work, Christine is attacked by the surprisingly spry Ganush, who, after a violent confrontation, rips a button off of her coat and intones a curse upon it. Christine is now beset by the "Lamia", an impish spirit from Romani folklore that torments its victim for three days before dragging their soul, kicking and screaming, into the brimstone pits of Hades. Now, with the help of her disbelieving yet supporting boyfriend (Justin Long) and a rattled fortune teller (Dileep Rao), Christine must find a way to purge herself of her curse before the inevitable, as the Lamia fiendishly toys with her before moving in for the kill.
Sam Raimi's throwback to his early low-budget horror stomping grounds after years in Blockbusterland,
Drag Me To Hell is one of his best efforts, showcasing all of his spry visual gymnastics and dark sense of humor, with Lohman bringing screamy conviction to her lead performance. Set to a superb Christopher Young score and boasting the kind of enveloping sound design that's never nominated for an Academy Award, but deserves to be, the movie knocks the viewer around like a pinball, climaxing with a bravura conclusion that evokes the classic Burgess Meredith
Twilight Zone cry of "It's not fair...it's not
fair!"
Skipping back to his first studio project,
Darkman stars Liam Neeson as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist on the cusp of developing a new synthetic skin substitute, one that can allow burn victims to attain a new sense of normality. The rub is the skin bubbles away into a puddle of goo after 99 minutes' worth of exposure to the light. Violently attacked in his lab one night by a gaggle of gangsters (led by Larry Drake, doing a witty Edward G. Robinson turn), who dunk his face in acid and leave him horrifically burned, Peyton escapes from the hospital where a radical new medical procedure cuts him off from his pain receptors, but leaves his emotions in a constant, heightened state of extreme turmoil. Returning to the bombed-out ruins of his lab, he vows to finally perfect his rubbery skin and regain his life with girlfriend Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand), but in the meantime, utilizes his
Mission: Impossible-style masks to disguise himself as the gang members who ruined his face and life, playing them off each other
Yojimbo-style in the pursuit of REVENGE!!!
Darkman isn't "pure" horror in the traditional sense (being more of an action flick with ghoulish touches), but Neeson's crisped visage and the film's heightened sense of melodrama evokes classics like
The Phantom Of The Opera. Raimi, like he did in his
Evil Dead films, utilizes the camera with a jackhammer ferocity that replicates the feeling of rapidly paging through a comic book better than much of the anonymous $200 million superhero junk of the modern day (even Raimi's own
Dr. Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness only had glimmers of his old style in it). Set to Danny Elfman's excellent score (which melds perfectly with Bill Pope's overheated cinematography and the narrative's purple prose (you can practically see the speech bubbles forming over the actors' heads as they deliver lines like "What is it about the dark? What secrets does it hold...?"). The movie is ultimately a bit on the slight side, but to my inner sixteen-year-old, it remains a stylish, endlessly rewatchable kick that does more with its $14 million budget (or, about 14% of Robert Downey, Jr.'s paycheck for the next two
Avengers movies) than most bloated Capesh!t does with several hundred mil to play around with.
-
Your Monster ^ (2024):
Melissa Barrera plays Laura Franco, a young woman recovering from a bout of cancer (her lout of a boyfriend, played by Edmund Donovan, breaks up with her in the hospital!) who returns to her New Jersey apartment only to discover her childhood monster in the closet is actually quite real. After her initial freakout, she dubs her housemate "Monster" (played by an amusingly nonchalant Tommy Dewey) and tries to adjust to the strangeness of her new living conditions even as she tries out for the lead role in the stage musical her ex originally wrote for her.
An example of Hell Hath No Fury,
Your Monster is a consistently amusing view, thanks to the burgeoning friendship -- and bestial romantic chemistry -- between Barrera and Dewey, leading to a nifty narrative reveal of an ending. It's hardly "scary", but as a metaphorical examination of how a spurned lover turns inward for self-comfort, it's a fun little exercise in Lite horror/comedy.
-
Time Cut ^ (2024):
Madison Bailey plays Lucy, a teen girl in 2024 living in the shadow of her deceased older sister, Summer (Antonia Gentry), who was murdered by a serial killer (clad in your typical, off-the-rack plastic mask) in 2003. But a time-travel contrivance delivers her back to the era of Ugg Boots, Heelies and Avril Lavigne, where she's caught in a dilemma... does she intervene in historical events and prevent her death, or does she do nothing, because if she does, her parents might never decide to have a late-in-life second child, causing her to wink from existence like Marty McFly?
Your standard-issue slasher flick that clogs the streaming services every October, with all of the usual signposts and affectations of the modernized riff on the old 80s formulas (including the textureless, Jell-O cube cinematography and generically attractive young casts), Netflix's
Time Cut isn't awful, but there's not a thing to distinguish it in either the slasher or time travel genres, with weaksauce PG-13 violence (where everyone's Off-Screened to death) and lack of temporal cleverness. Last year's Amazon Prime release
Totally Killer was far more amusing and had more fun with the signposts of its late-80s setting (or maybe I'm just feeling old as hell that the early 2000s is now far enough away to have wan nostalgia movies like this devoted to them), and executive producer Christopher Landon's
Happy Death Day movies managed to avoid the PG-13 slasher pitfall by having more likable characters and creative situations. Tweens might get a few chuckles out of this, but anyone else will find it a mild chore.
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