Oktoberfest 2020
2020 is the shittiest year ever. Hopefully these films won't be.
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- DirectorDavid TwohyStarsBruce GreenwoodDavid CrowMatthew DavisThe crew of a U.S. Navy submarine in World War II rescues survivors from a sunken ship, only to face a series of mysterious deaths and supernatural occurrences.Begin.
- DirectorHerk HarveyStarsCandace HilligossFrances FeistSidney BergerAfter a traumatic accident, a woman becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival.What a weird little movie. It feels like it could be an art movie from the 90's, but it was made by like an industrial filmmaker in the 60's. It's so awkward and weird, but at the same time it's very ahead of its time. Like the scene when the priest fires the main character for playing the wrong music and then immediately tells her that she will find the help she needs at church - that kind of satire was just unheard of at the time! The shot composition, editing style, visual scares, all of this is very inventive. The ending was like a rough draft of the ending of Ingmar Bergman's The Hour of the Wolf. I can't comfortably say that any of this was intentional, though, that's why it felt like such a baffling experience. I might have to look up the director a bit more and see what he has to say about this movie.
Also, there's a scene in season 3 of The Mighty Boosh that totally took inspiration from the dancing scene at the end of this movie. - DirectorRoman PolanskiStarsMia FarrowJohn CassavetesRuth GordonA young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.I think that this is one of those movies that everyone agrees on being a masterpiece - I'm no different. It's very slow paced, but it's so worth it.
Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant proves both that Polanski should've made more horror movies and that there should be made more horror movies taking place in apartments. - DirectorJ.A. BayonaStarsBelén RuedaFernando CayoRoger PríncepA woman brings her family back to her childhood home, which used to be an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.Hadn't seen it in a while. It still holds up. I mean, that bus scene is really dumb, but that kind of hide n seek scene is really great. Overall it does a great job creating a creepy tone.
This would probably be a good companion piece to The Others. - DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsRod TaylorTippi HedrenJessica TandyA wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.Never seen this before despite being both a horror fan and a Hitchcock fan. Which is a shame, because I really liked it. The bird attack scenes are surprisingly intense and the effects were pretty good for the time. The school attack scene was probably my favorite, but mostly because of the build up to it. My other favorite scene was the one right after it at the diner. The way all different kinds of people joined in on the conversation every once in a while and that it still felt like a genuine restaurant going about its business.
It's not up there with Rear Window or Vertigo, but it's a pretty damn good movie. - DirectorJames WhaleStarsBoris KarloffMelvyn DouglasCharles LaughtonSeeking shelter from a storm, five travelers are in for a bizarre and terrifying night when they stumble upon the Femm family estate.It's got a great cast, I'll give it that. The movie itself is not particularly great, though. It starts off pretty interesting, but just kind of fades out. The ending was awful, in my opinion. There was no payoff to the interesting stuff. The only thing that had a payoff was the romance angle and that shit was boring. I wanted more Karloff and more of the weird family at the end. Saul should've been more of a menace than just a straight up goof. Like, if he was played by Conrad Veidt or someone like that.
I wanted more. I guess that the mixing of horror and comedy was pretty groundbreaking at the time, unless someone can prove me wrong. - DirectorPaul LynchStarsLeslie NielsenJamie Lee CurtisCasey StevensAt a high-school senior prom, a masked killer stalks four teenagers who were responsible for the accidental death of a classmate six years previously.This movie is shit. There are no deaths until about 65 minutes into this 90 minute film and all the kills are lame. The backstory has no implications whatsoever except for the killer's motivation, but even that part is so poorly executed. There are no implications to the guy involved in the backstory dating Jamie Lee Curtis. All the characters are boring. Several of them are just placed there as red herrings and very obviously so, which takes away any sort of tension from them being in the story.
The only thing keeping me from giving this a 1/10 are a few neat shots here and there. - DirectorBrian YuznaStarsBilly WarlockConcetta D'AgneseBen SlackAn ordinary teenage boy discovers his family is part of a gruesome orgy cult for the social elite.What a fucked up ending...
- DirectorPaul W.S. AndersonStarsLaurence FishburneSam NeillKathleen QuinlanA rescue crew is tasked with investigating the mysterious reappearance of a spaceship that had been lost for seven years.American horror movies from the late 90's and early 00's are generally kind of awful, in all honesty. Event Horizon falls into that category. It's cheesy as all hell and the CG is really dated.
- DirectorLucio FulciStarsTisa FarrowIan McCullochRichard JohnsonStrangers searching for a young woman's missing father arrive at a tropical island where a doctor desperately seeks the cause and cure of a recent epidemic of the undead.Talk about padding out a runtime. I think this movie has about 40 minutes of useful material and the rest is just filler. It's a shame because the zombie action is quite good. I love how the zombies are framed and the gore effects are really nice. The music is also kickass!
- DirectorJeremy SaulnierStarsAnton YelchinImogen PootsAlia ShawkatA punk rock band is forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar.Really good, raw and gritty film in company of S. Craig Zahler's films that I've been going through this year. I loved it. Anton Yelchin was taken from us way too soon, man.
- DirectorJohn CarpenterStarsJames WoodsDaniel BaldwinSheryl LeeRecovering from an ambush that killed his entire team, a vengeful vampire slayer must retrieve an ancient Catholic relic that, should it be acquired by vampires, will allow them to walk in sunlight.It's alright, decent. I haven't seen Ghosts of Mars, but I'm still going to assume that this is John Carpenter's last decent film. It's not better than In the Mouth of Madness, but it's better than Village of the Damned. I wish Sheryl Lee would've been in more prominent movies during her prime because she's a great actress.
- DirectorStuart GordonStarsLance HenriksenStephen LeeWilliam NorrisHorror film set in 1492 Toledo, Spain, depicting the cruel deeds of a monk named Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.I watched this movie solely based on this poster. I mean, I know who Stuart Gordon is, but the only reason I watched this before watching Re-Animator or From Beyond is because I really love this poster.
I did like the movie as well. It has a great central performance from Lance Henriksen and a strong supporting cast. I love the look of it. The shot composition, lighting, color pallet, it all looks so appealing despite some horrific things happening on screen. The anachronisms were very inconsistent. The conversations would seem normal and all of the sudden someone would say something very modern. I can't say that it was an intentional choice because they would be on and off with the anachronistic dialogue.
This isn't an amazing movie or anything, but it is a solid horror movie. I haven't seen the Roger Corman movie from the 60's, so I don't know which one is the better film. I might put that on the list for nest year. - DirectorDavid CronenbergStarsPaul HamptonJoe SilverLynn LowryThe residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.With this and Rabid I feel like David Cronenberg wanted to tell the same story, but he didn't have enough of a budget to shoot in the city. It's essentially the same story, but this is more self-contained. It's a bottle movie that takes place in an apartment building. I love bottle movies, I love when horror movies takes place in an apartment or apartment building, I appear to love virus outbreak movies because I can name several that I've really enjoyed and I love early David Cronenberg movies. It's safe to say that this is right up my alley. It's very low budget so there are obvious limitations to the production - the acting isn't great and the foley and sound editing are very sloppy. It's not perfect, but if you love the things I listed off then I would highly recommend this movie. I'm not sure if I liked this or Rabid more. I love both, that's for sure.
- DirectorAbel FerraraStarsAbel FerraraCarolyn MarzBaybi DayAn artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.Ugh, I hated this. It's one of the most annoying movies I've seen in a long time. Imagine if Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes had an annoying little brother that wanted to be just like them - that's exactly what this movie feels like. Its main concern is to be as cool and out there as possible, but it only comes off as obnoxious because it's neither of those things. Abel Ferrara cannot act at all. The tone and filmmaking intent shines through his character as he's the main reason as to why the movie doesn't work. He gives these speeches and has these fits and I don't believe them for one second. The whole band subplot is pointless and doesn't go anywhere. The music is bad, the characters are obnoxious and the acting is shit. You'd think that he'd at least kill all of them, but no. Abel Ferrara watched The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and thought "I can do that too".
A filmmaker full of himself at the tail end of a decade where true artists were seeing their unique visions blossom all the way to the bank thought that he was just as unique and talented as them and wanted to hog in on that action. Some people will most definitly disagree with me on this take, but I genuinely hated this movie. - DirectorRichard AttenboroughStarsAnthony HopkinsAnn-MargretBurgess MeredithA ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart.Creepy. The performances and the score are its main virtues. I do really like the setting as well. It's not my favorite by any means, I mean I think I like the movie Pin more - which, if you don't know, is another take on this kind of premise, but I would say that this is a better movie.
- DirectorNicolas RoegStarsJulie ChristieDonald SutherlandHilary MasonA married couple grieving the recent death of their young daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond.Saturday night, had a couple of friends over, alchohol was consumed, we was going to watch Don't Torture a Duckling, but I couldn't find my copy. So instead, we decided to watch another horror movie set in Italy with "Don't" in te title. It probably wasn't the best movie to watch with drunk friends. We were having the mindset f making fun of a shitty Italian horror movie, not to watch an art film. It's a great movie that I hadn't seen for over 5 years. Um, I wasn't able to understand all the implications and symbolisms and subtleteis. Maybe if I was sober - Sorry Nic Roeg. The ending made us laugh.
- DirectorLewis TeagueStarsDee WallaceDaniel Hugh KellyDanny PintauroCujo, a friendly St. Bernard, contracts rabies and conducts a reign of terror on a small American town.It's an alright horror movie. The dog is certainly scary. The dog action is really good and the make-up is really gross, which is a good thing. The acting from Dee Wallace is solid, the kid is also pretty effective during the intense scenes. He's actually screaming and crying all the time, which isn't a common thing with child actors in Hollywood, so cujos to him. I wasn't paying too much attention for the first half, because it's Sunday and I was watching the Buccaneers completely obliterate the Packers at the same time. I feel like this is a movie you can do that with, though. It is based on a Steven King, so I guess it could be considered as more of classy horror movie, but Steven King adaptations to film, if the right people aren't working on it, are generally mediocre or awful. Cujo, because of the brilliant dog action, is slightly above the standard, but it's still not a masterpiece or anything.
- DirectorLewis AllenStarsRay MillandRuth HusseyDonald CrispA composer and his sister discover that the reason they are able to purchase a beautiful gothic seacoast mansion very cheaply is the house's unsavory past.Very nice gothic horror, I approve.
- DirectorAndy MuschiettiStarsJessica ChastainNikolaj Coster-WaldauMegan CharpentierAfter a young couple take in their two nieces, they suspect that a supernatural spirit named Mama has latched onto their family.I'll give this movie credit for trying to create some creepy visuals and creepy audio, but it's far too reliant on jumpscares. It has one effective and the rest of them are cheap tricks. There are several ones that are on display only for an audience that isn't there and I hate that. Something scary will happen but the characters won't react to it. The prologue was poorly executed. The cinematography and look of it was honestly just shit. The child actors in this scene were god awful, they've just been in a car crash and some creepy monster just murdered their dad and they're completely emotionless. I get their weird behavior later on, but before this point they've, as far as we know, had a completely normal childhood. Fortunately, we only have to bare them for about 5 minutes, but it really starts you off on the wrong foot. I'm not a big fan of the ending either. I hate that modern Hollywood horror movies has to go so much over the top at the end. Like, it's not scary anymore, it's just tiresome.
From memory, this is very similar in tone and quality to The Woman in Black. They're both mediocre to alright horror movies reliant on jumpscares, but has one really effective one. They both actually have an actor that starred in Game of Thrones as well. I'm not really rushing back to see this one. All of these kinds of horror movies are generally the same. - DirectorMario BavaStarsCameron MitchellEva BartokThomas ReinerA masked, shadowy killer brutally murders the models of a scandalous fashion house in Rome."If only the men were back, we're all women left alone!" is a quote from this movie. Honestly, it's still probably my favorite Giallo that I've seen so far though. Granted, every other Giallo I've seen are from Dario Argento and I really dislike Dario Argento. I liked this movie well enough. The visuals are great.
- DirectorJoe DanteJohn LandisGeorge MillerStarsDan AykroydAlbert BrooksVic MorrowFour horror and science fiction segments, directed by four famous directors, each of them being a new version of a classic story from Rod Serling's landmark television series.Anthology films are good, because if you don't like one segment you know that it's not much left of it and that another one will be starting soon. I think that the Spielberg segment was my favorite. It wasn't horror in the slightest, but it was the most fun. The Joe Dante segment was weird, interesting and had some cool creatures. The George Miller segment was genuinely anxiety enducing. And the John Landis segment will probably be the one I'll forget about first.
- DirectorTakashi ShimizuStarsYûrei YanagiYueRyôta KoyamaA teacher visits the house of one of his students after the boy goes missing, only to have a horrifying excuse for his absence from school.Yo, this was actually really creepy! Well first of all, I had no idea that it was shot on video. I only knew that it was connected to The Grudge in some way. I haven't seen that one in a handful of years, so I don't remember if that is just a straight up remake of this. There is a Ju-On 2 from the same year as this movie, which I might end up watching as well just out of curiosity.
I'd say that this movie knew how to utilize its budget, because I'm assuming that it's a micro-budget film. The creepy scenes are extremely effective, at least they were for me. The cinematography is surprisingly great for the consumer grade camera that it was shot with. The director knew how to shoot and light scenes in a way that made everything much more creepy than it would've been if your average joe director was handed the same script with the same budget. The sound design also helps, apart from that one stock sound effect that appears multiple times. You know when you hear it - it's at the start of the third episode of the BBC Walking With Dinosaurs mini-series. But hey, the money was spent on more important things. There's a moment with CG that probably wasn't that good, but because of the low quality camera, the way the scene was shot and edited, it still kind of looked good. The language barrier prevented me from detecting if the acting was good or bad, but nobody stood out as being awful.
Yeah, this gets a recommendation from me. I liked this more than alot of other Asian studio horror movies from this era. It's also a shy 70 minutes long and it's an anthology film. It's over before you know it. - DirectorFritz KierschStarsPeter HortonLinda HamiltonR.G. ArmstrongA young couple is trapped in a remote town where a dangerous religious cult of children believes that everyone over age 18 must be killed.Bland horror. The cult leaders were horribly miscast, they weren't intimidating at all. The music was really cheesy. It really does feel like a short story stretched out to a feature length film. There's not much to it other than a couple running in to an abandoned small town ran by a cult of children. We don't need the two siblings and their backstory, we don't need internal cult bickering, we don't need the old man. The ending was awful, they went all out on the mystic aspect of the film and to me that was the least interesting part of the film. Cults are all bullshit, so when you add an actual supernatural element to it it ceases to be interesting.
- DirectorStuart RosenbergStarsJames BrolinMargot KidderRod SteigerNewlyweds and their three children move into a large house where a mass murder was committed. They start to experience strange, inexplicable manifestations which have strong effects on everyone living in or visiting the house.I like me a nice slow-burn horror movie - this kind of overdid the slow-burning, though. It's way too long and shockingly little happens during this 2 hour movie. It's very clearly influenced by The Shining, even though this is based on another book that came out the same year. I haven't read either, but I'm assuming that this movie took inspiration from both. You have the father being driven insane by a building to eventually go after his family with an axe, the house leaks blood at the end, one of the children has an imaginary friend etc. Nowadays, some of these things are something you see in every modern haunted house movie. This movie has obviously influenced modern horror alot. It does pretty much the exact same things as alot of new shitty horror movies, but achieves the goals much more successfully mainly due to it barely showing us any of the supernatural stuff. There's like 5 seconds of weird shit on screen and the rest is just doors closing and flies. It's very interesting in that way, for sure. However, at the same time, you could cut out the entire Rod Steiger subplot from the film and it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever. His character does nothing and his story has no conclusion - it just stops. The movie is waaay too fucking long.
The eeriest part of the movie for me though would have to be the main theme. I feel like I've heard it somewhere before, but can't put my finger on where that would be and it kind of makes it even more eerie.