This documentary tells the tale of Russ McKamey and the McKamey Immersive Horror Haunted house, a place where the former US Navy veteran ‘hosts’ people who come to his house and he puts them through torturous situations.
The doc used only real footage, footage that was filmed during these events at the house and it was shocking what people would allow him to do to them. Waterboarding, burying them alive, or exploiting the guest’s deepest fears.
I was shocked at how many people appeared on the doc to support or defend Russ. There were several people who had signed up for the immersive house only to realize how wild and horrific and sadistic the situations would become.
I could have used more specifics or background on Russ McKamey, who appears in the videos as well, because it would be good to know more about him and his choices.
I wanted more from the doc, but the story it did tell was unbelievable.
There was a new sci-fi/horror film that debuted on Hulu this week starring Lil Rel Howery called The Mill.
A businessman in the corporation Mallard woke up one day in an open-air prison with a grist mill in the center of the cell. An electronic voice indicated that he was here to increase his productivity because his work has been slipping lately. He had to push the mill to reach a quota daily or else he would receive consequences.
Joe (Lil Rel Howery) was desperate to get out of this prison so he could get back to his pregnant wife before she gave birth to his son.
The set up of the movie was interesting, but the premise was about all that was interesting for me. It does become repetitive after awhile with little development.
Howery was passable in the role, though he always felt like he may not have been leading character material. He was okay.
I hated the ending of the movie though. It felt like a giant cop out and there was nothing satifying about the conclusion.
I thought this might be an interesting film, but it did not expand to more than what it was. It was an obvious message film that was just not much to see.
I finished off the four Wes Anderson shorts on Netflix that adapted stories from Roald Dahl tonight with Poison, a short that was both funny and ridiculously intense.
Benedict Cumberbatch played Harry, a British man in India who had a poisonous snake slither onto his chest and go to sleep as he laid on his bed. Woods, played and narrated by Dev Patel, rushed for help from Doctor Ganderbai, played by Ben Kingsley, while Harry tried to stay completely still and quiet.
This was beautifully played by the three main actors in the short. Their interactions and reactions to the situation was glorious. There were several times that I laughed out loud, even though I had that same feeling of trying not to make any noise.
However, the end of the short left a bit to be desired by me. I don’t want to spoil it, but to say that the ending was not what I would have wanted is clear.
In fact, before the end of the short, I would have placed this at the top of the list of the four Wes Anderson shorts released on Netflix, but with the conclusion of Poison, I found that lacking.
This was a cool experiment with the four shorts released on the streamer. These were all very entertaining and great to watch.
One of my favorite TV shows of all time is coming to Hulu this week. October 10th will see the arrival of ABC’s Moonlighting on the streaming service and I plan on adding Moonlighting to the list of shows that I am doing a rewatch for.
However, I decided that I would kick things off tonight by doing a review of the pilot episode of Moonlighting, which was a TV movie which went for an hour and a half and gave us the story of how Dave and Maddie came to be together.
Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) awoke one day to find that all of her money and assets had been stolen from her. She did have a few businesses that were in place as tax write-offs so she was preparing to close these all down.
When she came to the detective agency that she owned, she met David Addison (Bruce Willis) and the chemistry was off the charts. He was annoying and would not accept being fired. He recognized Maddie as the Blue Moon Girl and he could see how her name and reputation could help the agency.
Maddie was not interested, but David would not give up, following her to a date she was having at a restaurant. Before they knew it, a man with a mohawk hairstyle gave Maddie a mysterious wristwatch and fell dead at her feet with a knife in his back.
With David’s manipulations, the pair found themselves involved in the case, trying to determine why this watch was worth killing for.
David and Maddie were absolutely gold together. The chemistry, the banter, the talking at the same time, it all just worked beautifully. Both had a ton of charm and they were clearly taken with one another. Yet, they were so different that the conflict between them was just palpable and drove so much story.
David was such a BS artist, but you could see that beneath it all was a heart of gold. Maddie was cold and withdrawn, but beneath that was a warm and passionate person. They made an amazing pairing and you could see how this was going to become the phenomenon that it did.
The case was good, which was not always the way with Moonlighting storylines. Many times the story was just an excuse to put Dave and Maddie into certain situations. This one had some good twists and actually highlighted some of the skills Dave and Maddie had.
There is so much good about this pilot that you can tell how it is moving forward. Moonlighting depends on Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis and they carry that charisma a long way.
The fifth film of the October 13 was a film from the mid-90s starring one of those characters that I loved as a kid, even though I may have been more of a Hot Stuff kid. Casper the Friendly Ghost was one of the Harvey Comics iconic characters and the creation of a live-action Casper was exciting at the time.
Honestly, I remember really liking this movie when I first saw it in the 90s. After a re-watch today, I still think it was pretty decent, but the flaws in it were much more obvious.
According to IMDB, “Furious that her late father only willed her his gloomy-looking mansion rather than his millions, Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty) is ready to burn it to the ground when she discovers a map to a treasure hidden in it. But when she enters it to seek her claim, she is frightened away by a wicked wave of ghosts. Determined to get her hands on this hidden fortune, she hires afterlife therapist Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman) to exorcise the ghosts from the mansion. James and his daughter, Kat (Christina Ricci), move in, and soon Kat meets Casper (Malachi Pearson), the ghost of a young boy who’s “the friendliest ghost you know”. But not so friendly are Casper’s uncles Stretch(Joe Nipote), Fatso (Bead Garrett), and Stinkie (Joe Alaskey), who are determined to drive all ‘fleshies’ away. Ultimately, it is up to James and Kat to help the ghosts cross over to the other side.“
This film was not very well balanced. At times, there were some real deep, potentially emotional ideas in the scripts, but then it went off on a slapstick, cartoonish direction that buried the ideas that were here.
The specifics between the characters and their back stories were really well done and could have been expanded to make this a better film. Casper’s past story, the relationship with Kat and her father, the absence of Kat’s mother, and Casper and Kat’s connection could have been more than enough to make this an enjoyable movie.
Unfortunately, just about everything with the film’s villain Carrigan Crittenden was over-the-top and did not feel as if it fit in with the part of this film that was the strongest. It was cool to see Eric Idle as her sidekick/flunky Dibs but he could not save any of this material.
Then the whole idea of the treasure hidden in the castle was so worn and wasted, it felt like a ghost story told by the Goonies. And not in the cool way.
I was also not a fan of the trio of Casper’s ghost uncles. The only voice I recognized was Brad Garrett but these characters were more annoying than they were interesting. I wondered what their unfinished business was and why they just stuck around to torment Casper.
Christina Ricci was charming, doing her best imitation of Wynona Rider in Beetlejuice. The special effects looked great, especially Casper. It was a nice little family film that has its share of flaws, but that has a good message and some strong actors in these roles. I think most of the problems are overcome by the positives.
Stephen King has had adaptations of his writing that have worked and several that have not. The Mist is one of those adaptations that brings fear, tension and anxiety from the moment that the mysterious mist enveloped the little town in Maine.
A strong cast led by Thomas Jane as David Drayton are put through the wringer as a group of horrifying Lovecraftian monsters trapped them inside a supermarket. Unfortunately, the monsters on the outside of the store are just one of the tribulations that these people had to face.
Marcia Gay Harden is creepy as the religious zealot Mrs. Carmody, who had decided that this is Judgment Day and everything that is happening to them is God’s will. Her decent into extremity is one of the more frightening aspects of the film. Andre Braugher does a great job as Brent Norton, who is one of David’s neighbors who has had some conflicts with him. It made Norton distrustful of what was happening. Toby Jones played Ollie, an employee of the supermarket who comes through big time during the film.
Other cast members include Sam Witwer, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, William Sadler, Frances Sternhagen, Nathan Gamble, Robert Treveiler, David Jensen, Chris Owen, Alexa Davalos and The Walking Dead’s Carol, Melissa McBride. McBride’s character had no name listed but I absolutely wanted to stick with her because I know Carol is a survivor.
Of course, I cannot talk about The Mist without addressing the ending of the film. I want to try to address it with as few spoilers as possible. If you have seen The Mist, you know to what I am referring. As heartbreaking as it is, the irony and the absolute heart-wrenching that the scene makes it one of the most standout conclusions of a horror movie I have seen in many years. This is totally crushing and makes what was a strong and scary film into something more.
The Mist is a horror movie that works on several different levels and shows us that there is more to be afraid of than the unknown.
Moving back a week on the release calendar because of Taylor Swift next week, The Exorcist: Believer was released as a sort of sequel to the original classic horror film from 1973. Blumhouse gave the reigns of this new version of the franchise to David Gordon Green, who was behind the recent Halloween trilogy.
Sadly, this film was about as good as those Halloween movies.
Two young girls, Angela (Lidya Jewett), and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), walked from school, going into the woods and disappeared. Angela’s father Victor (Leslie Odom Jr) desperately tried to find his daughter. Three days later, the girls returned without knowing how long they were missing.
It does not take long to realize that there was something terribly wrong with the girls. Ann Dowd played Ann, who directed Victor to go see Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) who was an expert in the possible situation.
I’ll start off with the good things about the movie, because this was not a total failure in my opinion. The two little girls did a nice job with their performances. I enjoyed Leslie Odom Jr. a lot. He carried himself as a star.
The start of the film spent a decent amount of time building the character of Angela and Victor. Of course, the film did almost nothing for Katherine or her family. They were just there.
That is about it. The film’s story was derivative. There was nothing different or new about the film, outside of the fact there were two possessed children instead of one. Very original (sarcasm).
Ellen Burstyn was forced into the story in an attempt to make this connect to the original. Burstyn played the mother in the original The Exorcist and she is so wasted in this movie. She was barely in the film. In fact, most of her appearance in the film was found in the trailer.
The ending of this movie was just terrible. I did not like that third act at all. No spoilers, but it did not work for me at all.
Overall, I did not hate myself for watching this, but I did not enjoy the film. I am not sure why this is considered a sequel to The Exorcist because it could have been any generic possession movie. There was nothing new or worthwhile about doing it.
The October 13 continued tonight with the Laika stop motion animated film Coraline, based on the book of the same name from Neil Gaiman.
Coraline is a beautifully animated movie with some amazing visuals and some of the most creative and creepy images that were truly scary, especially for the younger viewers.
According to IMDB, “When Coraline (Dakota Fanning) moves to an old house, she feels bored and neglected by her parents. She finds a hidden door with a bricked up passage. During the night, she crosses the passage and finds a parallel world where everybody has buttons instead of eyes, with caring parents and all her dreams coming true. When the Other Mother (Teri Hatcher) invites Coraline to stay in her world forever, the girl refuses and finds that the alternate reality where she is trapped is only a trick to lure her.“
This film is a classic and it really works well. It is very easy to relate to the young girl who is just looking for something that she is missing from her parents who are not engaging with their daughter. The curiosity of the mysterious dimension was too great to ignore. Coraline found something that filled the gap, although she did not realize that there was trouble with it.
There are some great voice talents involved here besides Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher. Others in the cast included Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, John Hodgman, Robert Bailey Jr., Keith David, Carolyn Crawford, and Ian McShane.
Coraline is an excellent film that creates a wonderfully creepy tone and it is highlighted perfectly with the character design and the imagery. Coraline is a great Halloween film for the whole family.
I watched the third of the four new live action shorts from Wes Anderson on Netflix, shorts that adapted work from author Roald Dahl.
Tonight’s film was The Swan, and it had the same original presentation that the other two films that I had watched so far on the streaming service. The actors, in this case, Rupert Friend, was our narrator and walked through the story. I love this style for these shorts as the narrators seem to be telling us the story and we see other actors almost pantomiming the situations as he explained it.
There was not much of a cast behind him though. Only a young boy named Asa Jennings who played the main character, Peter Watson. Peter was tormented by a pair of bullies who wound up killing a swan and strapping the wings to Peter, forcing him up a tree in an attempt to fly.
I was quite engaged with this story, which was fairly shocking to me. When they made poor Peter lay down on the train tracks as he was tied up, I was really rooting for these bullies to get there’s. Sadly, that did not happen, which left me a bit empty after the end of the short. It did feel like one of those darker endings that Roald Dahl was known for.
Three for three so far with these Wes Anderson shorts.
I went to see Sleepy Hollow originally back in the Voy Theater when it was released in 1999. I remember coming out of that screening being very unhappy with the film and I have never revisited it since. That is, until tonight.
Johnny Depp starred in this film, a reimagining of the classic folk tale of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman. Depp played Ichabod Crane, a constable from New York sent to the small town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate the series of murders that had seen victims’ heads decapitated.
Once in Sleepy Hollow, Crane, not the bravest of souls, came across several notable gentlemen in the town involved in some mysterious discussions. Crane also met and fell for Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci), the daughter of one of the men, Baltus (Michael Gambon).
It does not take long for Crane to realize that there was something supernatural going on with these murders.
This film turned out to be better than I remembered, but it was not a great one. There were some terrible choices for tone as it had some silly moments of humor that did not work well at all.
The action was decent, but there were also some ridiculousness, particularly with the stagecoach chase scene.
So basically, I started off thinking that this was better than I remembered, but as the film progressed, I liked it less and less. In the end, I did not hate watching this but I would not recommend it.
The second of the live action shorts from Wes Anderson adapting short stories from Roald Dahl that I watched on Netflix was called The Rat Catcher and it was amazing.
The Wes Anderson/Roald Dahl combination has been a successful one as Anderson seemingly adapts the darkness and humor of Dahl extremely well.
According to IMDB, “In an English village, a reporter and a mechanic listen to a rat catcher explain his clever plan to outwit his prey.”
This featured Ralph Fiennes as the Rat Man, Richard Ayoade as the Editor and Rupert Friend as Claud.
I loved how the story was told. I felt like laughing every time one of the three actors looked directly at the camera. They all three shared the narration responsibility depending on what was going down in the story.
The three actors also did a magnificent job of presenting the story in a specific manner. They used pantomime with some of the props that they used as well as some animation on a particular rat.
The Rat Man was a disturbing character, even though there was not a lot of special effects involved. Even the amount of costuming was kept at a minimum as the narration did most of the heavy lifting in creating an image in the audience’s head.
Overall, I liked this a lot, even more than I liked the previous one I watched, which was The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.
I was watching a YouTube video with Dan Murrell today and he made a mention of a short film called The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. I was then surprised later when I pulled up Netflix and there it was.
The new short was 38 minutes long and was directed by Wes Anderson. This was faithfully adapted from a long short story by Roald Dahl.
Henry Sugar was played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and several Wes Anderson regulars appear in the film including Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade.
This felt like a great blend of Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl. The Fantastic Mr. Fox was a previous Dahl story adapted by Anderson.
I loved how this was presented and the style of storytelling was great.
I went to Apple TV this morning to kick off the October 13 with the EYG Hall of Fame cartoon, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
This is such a classic with the Peanuts gang, created by EYG Hall of Famer Charles Schulz.
The idea that Linus was determined to wait up because the Great Pumpkin would rise from the pumpkin patch to deliver toys to kids across the world and he wanted to be front and center when it happened despite the condemnation by his sister Lucy and the others of the Peanuts gang.
Also in this show, we had the iconic football trick by Lucy on Charlie Brown and Snoopy flying his doghouse during World War I and being shot down by the Red Barron.
One of the things I noticed while watching this classic cartoon was how intelligent some of the dialogue and vocabulary was by these characters. This was absolutely not dumbed down in any way because kids are not smart enough to understand what is going on. That is a refreshing idea, that children’s animation can reach to elevate the material instead of bringing it down to a lower level.
There was also a great scene with Schroeder playing the piano and Snoopy dancing/reacting to the classical music he was playing. Again, it elevates the material.
There is a reason this is still played during the Halloween season, even after 57 years. This is an all-time classic that is funny, clever, intelligent and entertaining.
Gareth Edwards’s latest film is a massive sci-fi epic which is a strictly original film, not based on any preexisting content. One of the most impressive feats of the film is the fact that the budget of this film is reportedly around $80 million and they give us an unbelievably beautiful film with special effects everywhere. How did they do it and why can’t other films create such an amazing story at this price tag. It would help make the box office so much easier for films if they did not have to constantly make $500 + million to break even.
How about the movie? It was really good.
According to IMDB, “Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua (John David Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war-and mankind itself.”
John David Washington does a great job as your lead, Joshua. He played his role beautifully and was able to bring life tp a character that could have been a typical sci-fi character. He was able to bring way more to Joshua than you would expect.
And Madeleine Yuna Voyles, a young 9-year old actor in her first movie appearance ever, absolutely stole the film. She was completely brilliant as Alphie, the ‘weapon’ created to help end the war between humankind and the A.I.s. This little girl brought so much emotion and heart to her role that she dominated every scene, She had a great connection with Washington which was so essential to the movie. She gave a fantastic performance.
The special effects were out of this world. It was so spectacular that I am so shocked that the budget was what it was. I already talked about that, but the look of this movie is absolutely a huge piece of the film and should be considered for Oscar nominations for special effects.
The film does get a little long and the storyline was okay, but it did have a ton of intriguing ideas dealing with the human condition and how humans reacted to threats. There are not as many themes dealing with A.I. despite what you may think.
Overall, this was a wonderfully epic film with a great pair of performances, beautifully constructed in a futuristic world that we could certainly see one day. Sci-fi fans should love this and I do think it transcends the genre with a truly emotional ending.
No One Will Save You is a new sci-fi/horror film that is currently streaming on Hulu, and, I have got to tell you, it was a seriously scary, creepy film that left me a little uneasy after seeing it.
Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is a young, isolated girl who lived in her deceased mother’s house while everyone in the town treated her like a pariah. Brynn was dealing with anxiety and guilt over something that happened when she was younger that turned the town against her.
Then, one night, a home invasion turned out to be extraterrestrial in nature and Brynn has to desperately struggle against a variety of alien creatures to survive.
The gimmick of the movie is that there is almost zero dialogue in the entire 90 minute movie which creates a feel of anxiety and stress throughout. I wasn’t sure if she was mute as the film went along but it got to the point where you could see that she was not speaking because of what had happened in her childhood.
The sounds that were used in this movie, from the score to the sound design was epic and helped create that mood that the film was targeting.
The alien design is cool for the most part. Some are fairly typical aliens that you might see on the X-Files but there are a couple that are really scary and unsettling.
Kaitlyn Dever does an admirable job in this movie as Brynn, who spends nearly the entire runtime of the film without any dialogue. She had to express so much with her face and eyes and she does it beautifully. This could be a star making performance for her.
This was a mind-bending horror film that does a great job of building atmosphere and keeping the audience off-kilter. This was a good time with a neat idea that took a lot of the concepts in original ways.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 