Reviews
Oct 11, 2019
Remiss doesn’t begin to cover my neglect of my favorite hobby. So to make up for it, here are 5 mini-reviews of horror and horror-lite films just in time for Halloween.
Hellboy (2019)
No, just No.
This is a retelling of the comic book tale of a demon child with a stone hand, brought to earth by occultists but raised by a kindly professor. He fights paranormal baddies while he struggles with his own demonic nature.
While we can all only mourn what could have been if Guillermo del Toro had completed his original Hellboy trilogy, this hot mess of a film is not a balm for that loss. The pace and the gratuitous gore are unrelenting. The plot is simultaneously cursory and way, way too long. The acting is flat and the humor almost all is a miss. There was absolutely no reason to make this movie and less than no reason to watch it.
Is it a contender for worst film of all time? Not as long as 2015’s Pan still exists (13 argues that Strange Magic will forever hold the top spot. His absolute abhorrence of that film is a continual delight to me. He misses no opportunity to vilify it.) Regardless, it certainly tops the list as worst of 2019.
Ready or Not
Surprisingly good.
As the trailer reveals, our protagonist has married into a richy rich family whose traditions include an occasional round of The Most Dangerous Game. This time the new bride is the prey. Something in the steely-eyed resolved of said protagonist, or in the inventiveness of the plentiful gore, or in the tongue and cheek, in-on-the-joke quality of the acting elevates this over the typical woman-in-jeopardy film. It’s brisk, it’s funny and the protagonist is smart. I went in not expecting much, but thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Parenting note — don’t even think about taking kids. It’s every bit as gory as the execrable Hellboy.
Midsommar
Huh.
A group of friends, including a dating couple, travel to Sweden to witness a midsummer festival in a remote commune that one member of the group is from. THINGS happen.
First, the film is beautifully shot. The look of the film is utterly unique. In contrast to most horror films, which are shot in perpetual shadow, this film is set during the time of the midnight sun. Every shot, with its bizarreness and dread, is cast in full light.
While I appreciated the look and feel of the film and the quality of the acting, it’s also the film on the list I felt the most emotional distance from. I simply could not relate to the characters at all. The members of the collective were bizarre in the extreme and meant to be alien, but the group of friends was off-putting as well. The main protagonist was in the grips of a major depression due to a personal tragedy and it made her too one-note for me to connect with. And really what it may boil down to is the fact that I could not place myself in the action at all. I would never, under any circumstances have gone to this remote location, and having gone there, I would have left the moment these obvious cult members starting playing their pan-flutes. It was patently obvious from the moment that they arrive that no good could ever come from this festival. In other words, the protagonists had it coming.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Again, surprisingly good.
A group of high school students find a book of stories in a local spooky house. As is inevitably the case with such books found in such locations, the stories write themselves and the horrors within come to life. Each story is one of the greatest hits taken from the Scary Stories short story collections by Alvin Schwartz. The protagonists must find a way to unravel the secrets of the book and stop the stories before it’s too late.
While the film can’t match the magic or the chills of the original source material, it does a decent job. There’s legitimate grasp-the-arm-of-your-seat-and-look-away tension and appropriate ickiness without crossing into gore. The film definitely earns its PG-13.
Parenting aside — 11 and 13 enjoyed it. 11 is a horror movie buff and the thrills were good enough for her. 13 is not such a horror fan and the film had him covering his eyes and talking to the screen, but not running from the room.
It Chapter Two
Not as good as Chapter One.
It’s 27 years later and Pennywise the Clown has returned to Derry. Our crew of evil clown fighting teens have all grown up and gone their separate ways. Mike Hanlon, who never left Derry, calls them all back to fulfill their childhood promise to destroy Pennywise if he returned.
Chapter Two makes a decent showing and is a satisfactory ending to the series, it just is less than the original in several ways. The adult actors are well cast, with each serving as a reasonable grown up version of their character, and all the acting is well done. But they just aren’t as engaging as the child actors. Pennywise isn’t as menacing and the tension is less as well. Some of the problem may be that the action cuts back and forth between now and then and meanders a bit in the middle. Clocking in at close to three hours, there seems to be both too much film and not enough of the good parts.
Still, if you saw the first, you’ll want to see the second.
Parenting aside — went to the movie with 11, the horror buff. She enjoyed it, but also said it wasn’t as good as the first. It’s peppered with just as much bad language (which is a lot) and a fair bit of violence, but nothing approaching the splatter-gore of Hellboy or Ready Or Not.
