Tag Archives: horror

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #43

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SPOILERS

“Two Storms”

I am going to be perfectly honest. I had heard so many amazing things about The Haunting of Hill House before I started it during the Sunday Morning Sidewalk, and it has been disappointing. Yes, I have enjoyed the show so far, but it was not the epic that I was expecting.

Then, there was episode six, “Two Storms.”

Now I see what everyone else was talking about.

What an episode. This one blew all of the previous episodes away. It had tension, it had character reveals, it had story beats and it had some of the best direction/shots of the show.

There were multiple, long one-shots of scenes as the camera follows the grieving Crain family around the funeral parlor. Technically, this is a master class of direction from series runner Mike Flanagan. Whenever the one-shot would end, the transitions were spectacular, and we would be back into another oner. The design of the plan for each shot is unbelievable and executed perfectly.

The surviving Crain kids and their father finally are all together in the present day as a thunderstorm raged outside the funeral parlor. The show gave us a flashback to another storm that occurred with the Crain family while they lived at Hill House and they paralleled the two storms with a narratively striking purpose. We got to see some major effects that the house had on both Nell and Olivia. Nell’s disappearance and Olivia’s encounter with the spirits were chilling.

Chilling is a good way to describe many of the moments from this episode, including the appearance of the bent-neck woman at the family visitation. There was no jump scares here. The scenes transcended jump scares. They were done so spectacularly that you couldn’t help but be disquieted.

The character development was wonderful too, as secrets came out. The alcohol flowed freely (which I thought was incredibly selfish by every kid, considering Luke was there, clean and sober, watching his siblings all slapping back vodka) and the tongues were sharp. Fueled by their loss and grief, the kids and Hugh said some dramatically hurtful things to each other as truth came to the surface. Hugh seemed to be talking to himself, convincing Steven about the mental illness he believed ran in his family, but I believe it was clear that he was talking to Olivia’s spirit.

The concept of Nell and Olivia NOT having killed themselves, and, instead, being killed by the house came up and it triggered the resentment of the others for Steven’s book. They shared moments that we had seen over the first five episodes in the kids individual focused episodes that showed how much these siblings were not as close as they may have thought.

This episode elevated the entire series to a new level, one that makes me understand the fervor over this show that had seemed good, but not exceptional before this. I can’t wait to see where the show goes from here.

IT: Welcome to Derry S1 E

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Spoilers

“Now You See It”

Episode three of the new IT series on HBO Max is a banger.

We get some more psychic “shining” from Dick Hallorann, who we know ages up to work at the Outlook Hotel (and get an axe in his chest from Jack). The scene of him in the helicopter, flying over Derry and having psychic images of Pennywise in his forms, was exciting. Admittedly, as he was opening the cargo door of the copter, I never thought he’d fall out or die from that because I knew he had to be a part of the Shining eventually. Still, it was a tense moment.

Shawshank was mentioned too, which is part of the Stephen King shared universe. I do love how there are Easter eggs from other films in Derry. I’m sure there are some other hints out there that I do not recognize.

Ronnie’s father has something he is not telling anyone. It feels as if it is something that could work as an alibi, but he does not want to let that info out. Curious.

The flashback to the 1908 incident with Pennywise was scary. Frank and Rose’s interactions with the creature in the woods, a lookalike for the slender man from the carnival, was intense. Frank running from the creature only to be saved by Rose, wielding the slingshot that Frank had given to her (and Frank’s father had given to him). It was an exciting cold open showing what this episode would bring.

It was not as intense as when Ronnie, Lilly, Will, and Rich went into a graveyard to try and summon the monster that had attacked our departed friends from episode one in order to get pictures of it. I am not sure they could have come up with a more dangerous plan if they had tried. They were really fortunate to escape that event with their lives.

We end the episode with a pic of Pennywise as Will said of the photo he took, “It’s… a clown.”

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #42

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“The Bent-Neck Lady”

This week’s focus is on Nell and the visions she would have seeing the Bent-Neck Lady.

In what I thought was a fun bit of casting, Nell was seeing a therapist named Dr. Montague and he was played by Russ Tamblyn. What makes that fun was that Russ Tamblyn played Dr. Lawrence Jacoby on Twin Peaks. Jacoby was a quirky and oddball psychiatrist involved with Laura Palmer, a tragic death of a young woman. Very much like the death of Nell in The Haunting of Hill House.

The episode saw the events that lead up to Nell returning to Hill House the night that she died. It made sense with the way the last episode ended with Luke blurting out that Nell did not kill herself.

The last part of Nell’s life was filled with torment. I can’t imagine what sleep paralysis would be like. It sounded horrific and made things all the worse as we see how she suffered during it. Of course, the show implied that it was not just a simple case of sleep paralysis and that it had to do with the visions that she would see.

We see how Nell and her husband Arthur met and his tragic death. Those years for Nell seemed to be so wonderful that seeing him drop dead from the aneurism was tough.

That was not the toughest scene of the episode though.

The ending, where we see the identity of the Bent-Neck Lady revealed as Nell’s future self after she hanged herself from the spiral staircase on the night she returned to Hill House, was unbelievably anguish-filled. Watching Nell see all of these moments of her life, but as the bent-neck lady was something that I did not expect.

Now that we have seen Nell’s tragic final day at Hill House, one wonders where the show goes from here. There are still plenty of feelings of guilt and grief to deal with as this entire family does not seem to deal with what happened to them at hill House.

We flash back to the kids era and we see their father bringing them to a hotel and then going back “for mom” he tells them. That night is clearly something that we need to see more of moving forward.

How will everyone continue to deal with the loss of Nell? Luke, in particular, is a character that I am intrigued to see moving ahead. I want to see more of their father too, as he played some major role that we have yet to see.

This show has picked up big time. Last week’s episode was my favorite of the series so far… that is until this week. I think this was a near perfect horror episode with an amazing payoff to a mystery that we have been wondering, while still leaving plenty of questions to be answered.

Frankenstein (2025)

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Guillermo del Toro has had several iconic films, but he takes a swing at one of the moat iconic monster stories of all time with his adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. His new film dropped this weekend on Netflix.

Frankenstein has been adapted multiple times, but this new version certainly has that flair that del Toro films seem to have. It is somehow both a heart-rendering tragedy and filled with life at the same time.

The story is of arrogant doctor Victor Frankenstein, who lost his mother as a boy, which inspired him to take on death in an attempt to defeat it. This led him to work toward a goal of animating a creature made up of pieces of corpses. His success would lead to terrible tragedy for both The Creature and himself.

The Creature is played by Jacob Elordi, who played Elvis in the biopic entitled Priscilla. He does an amazing job taking this character that we all know and reinvigorate him. There are some wonderfully powerful scenes with Elordi as the Monster.

Victor Frankenstein was played by Oscar Isaac, who is always great. In this, Victor does not have much redeeming about him and really feels like the villain of the film. Even Isaac seemed to have trouble making this guy likable. Much of the told through Victor’s POV, but some of the best scenes did not include him.

The film looked absolutely tremendous. It was said that del Toro insisted on using some real sets instead of using CGI and it showed. To be fair, the rendering of the wolves were not the best use of CGI I have seen. The rest of the film looked spectacular.

The music of the score was beautiful, building mood throughout the film. Alexandre Desplat scored the film, which was the third time that del Toro and Desplat collaborated on a film.

There are some things that happen in the movie that I have never seen before in a Frankenstein film, which was welcome. It may be a touch too long as it felt as if it dragged some in the middle, but the overall quality of the movie is exceptional and it fits right in with some of del Toro’s classics.

4.1 stars

Predator: Badlands

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The newest film from the Predator franchise opened this weekend, from director Dan Trachtenberg, who has now directed three Predator movies with Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers. Those two were really great and it helped me to anticipate this new film.

Trachtenberg takes a big time swing here by making the Predator, which were called Yautja in this film, the protagonist of the film. This was one of my early troubles with the film, because I had a tough time accepting the idea of Dek, the Yautja, as our lead character.

That did not last for long though. I found myself very entertained with the action and the story. I did not expect this film to be like it was. I think it really picked up when Dek meets up with Thia (Elle Fanning). I knew of the character of Thia from the trailers, but it worked much more than I thought it would.

Predator: Badlands improved as the film moved along. I found it exciting and a lot of fun. I did have another issue with a switch in attitude that Dek goes through as it felt too sudden, but I do not want to go into too many details because of spoilers. Again, I did not think it was a deal breaker for the film, but it was something that I thought about.

I thought the third act was really epic.

The CGI was mostly good. There were a few moments where the CGI was iffy, but most of the time, it was exceptional.

It was cool that this film has a tie in with the Alien franchise, leading to a potentially new line of crossover.

Predator: Badlands is highly entertaining and full of energy. It looks great and has some of the most creative creatures and exciting action. It was a lot of fun and not what I expected.

4 stars

Strange Harvest

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This scared the hell out of me.

It has been a long time since I have been as disturbed by a film as I was by Strange Harvest, a film I rented on Fandango at Home (Vudu). This would have worked really well for the October 13, although I did not watch it until November.

This movie was filmed in the “True Crime” style documentary, though the story was fictional. I would call it a “mockumentary” though that term leads me to picture something funny like This is Spinal Tap, and there was nothing funny about Strange Harvest.

The film followed the story of the serial killer who became known as Mr. Shiny, and his multiple murders over several years. The main “talking heads” of the horror mockumentary were Detective Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Detective Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple). They provided most of the narrative for the fake documentary.

This feels like a real documentary, which I think is why it hit so hard. There is a “Blair Witch” tone to it which adds to the mood of this film. Up until the ending of the doc, this could be a true story.

Mr. Shiny is a combination of the Zodiac Killer and an H.P. Lovecraft character. When we learn of his identity as Leslie Sykes (Jesse J. Clarkson), the character becomes even more frightening than he did before. Jesse Clarkson does an amazing job of creating an eerie, creepy, sinister character who is more like a ghost than a human for much of the film.

This is definitely one of the most scary films I have seen in a long time. I am still feeling disconcerted and unquieted as I write this. I may go from here and jump into my bed and hide beneath my covers. Strange Harvest was an excellent experience.

4.75 stars

Daily Countdown: TV Shows #42

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#42

The Walking Dead

After the ending of LOST, I had a huge gap in my heart and I was not interested in replacing it with another TV show. I did not watch much TV after LOST left. I did not watch The Walking Dead’s first season because of that. I had heard some good word of mouth about the comic book adaptation, so I decided I would catch up on the first, short season.

It was so wonderful, it helped in the recovery from post-LOST life.

Few shows have generated the anguish that The Walking Dead has over its eleven seasons. I will be honest, I did not watch much of the last few years of the show. There was onlky so much pain one could take.

I remember the spot that began my end with this show. It was Glen. I am not sure that any TV death has ever been as emptying as when Negan smashed Lucille, his baseball bat, into Glen’s skull, as he did in the comics, it was horrific and left me feeling hollow. I knew it was done brilliantly well and created all kinds of story, but the fact was that Glen’s death was the slow end for me.

Before that though, The Walking Dead was so amazing. It had so many unbelievable moments. Shane and his craziness. Carol telling Lizzie to look at the flowers before shooting her in the head. Daryl Dixon and his overall awesomeness. Rick screaming for Carl.

One of the best additions in the later part of the show was Michonne, played by Danai Gurira. Michonne and her katana was so bad ass. I also enjoyed her eventual relationship with Rick, which I saw more of in the spin of featuring those two characters, The Ones Who Lived.

The Walking Dead took advantage of the resurgence of zombies, leading the way among pop culture in presenting some of the most frightening moments featuring the monsters. However, the show never justbecame about the zombies, or Walkers as they dubbed them. The show was about the relationships between and the choices made by the survivors, and proved consistently that the humans might be the real monsters in a zombie apocalypse.

Daily Countdown: TV Shows #43

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#43

What We Do in the Shadows

This past summer, I did a TV show first time watch by watching all six seasons of the FX series What We Do in the Shadows. Since they had usually around 10 episodes a season at about a half and hour, I would binge a season in one day and then do a write up.

What We Do in the Shadows was based on a movie from writer/director Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. The show is shot in the mockumentary format following a group of four vampire roommates living together in Staten Island.

The cast was exceptional and had a ton of chemistry with each other. The main stars included Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillén, Mark Proksch, and Kristen Schaal.

Much of the POV came from the human character Guillermo, who was the familiar for Nandor the Relentless, one of the four roommates. There was the married couple Lazlo and Nadja and the “energy vampire” Colin Robinson.

Every episode saw this out of time foursome dealing with something unbelievable. The one thing you could count on with What We Do in the Shadows was that it was funny.

The show was not only funny, but it was shocking. There was blood and other bodily fluids involved and provided a humorous look at a world that one wouldn’t think of as funny.

There were a ton of guests stars during the six seasons including such notable stars as Mark Hamill, Tilda Swinton, Dave Bautista, Paul Reubens, Scott Bakula, Patton Oswalt, Kevin Pollak, John Slattery, Wesley Snipes, and Evan Rachel Woods. This is just a few of the stars who found their way to this show.

The mockumentary style of the show was one of the big stars as well. It brought a wonderful quirkiness to the show that worked.

Every season was hilarious and, even the weaker ones, had some fabulous moments.

IT: Welcome to Derry S1 E1

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“The Pilot”

I loved IT. I loved the original TV show miniseries starring Tim Curry and the 2017 movie. The second part of the movie was not as strong, but I am a fan of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

So when I heard that there was a series in the works for HBO Max set in Derry in prior years when Pennywise would terrorize the children of Derry, I was all in.

While we did not see Pennywise in this first episode, it was anything but lacking. In fact, I found it shocking and, somewhat, upsetting.

They set up a group of kids, much like the “losers” from the film, and gave them a mission. Find Matty, the boy who we meet at the beginning who wound up with a weird family in an attempt to leave Derry.

These kids included Teddy, Phil, Lilly, Phil’s little sister Susie and Veronica. They were trying to solve the mystery of Matty’s disappearance after Lilly heard him speaking to her out of her pipes in her bathtub.

Shockingly, Lilly and Veronica were the only two to survive the encounter at the end of the episode. I couldn’t believe it because it sure seemed as of Teddy and Phil were being set up as the main characters of this show. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and I was sure something would happen to save them, even after seeing their blood splatter and Teddy actually being slammed face first into the projector room glass.

I am sad that they are gone, because I really liked them. I saw an interview with director Andy Muschietti who said they wanted to show that no one was safe in this setting. He did that for sure.

We’ll see where this goes from here. I thought this pilot episode was really good and it definitely defied what I expected to see.

Clown Park

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Clown Park  

By LBJlll

One day a group of 4 high school boys were sitting at lunch alone like always.

When they heard the cool kids talk about some clown park and how cool it was.

So after school they immediately met up with each other and decided to go there. The park was out of town. When they arrived at the park they were surprised to see the park was abandoned. 3 of the 4 boys wanted to head back home but Josh, who drove, said he didn’t drive all the way to the park just to turn around. The boys went in and they saw what looked to be blood on the front entrance wall but Josh said it was paint.

 They were hesitant but they kept going in until they made it to this room that turned the water slides on. They thought they found something cool but really they would see it wasn’t. They  ran up the stairs but Josh decided to wait and rest. All three of the boys agreed and went down the slide. When they got down the slide they were met with Josh laying in a pool of blood with a stab wound in his neck. Jake immediately ran to help but he slipped in the blood, fell forward and fell head first into a sharp wooden stick. The other two yelled lets leave right now. They started running. When the 2 kids got to the car they started calling 911 and driving home thinking they were safe. The dispatcher started talking but the two boys didn’t reply. 

The two boys didn’t respond because after the clown ended the first two boys he got in the back seat of the car with two knives and ended the boys there. The boy’s bodies were never found.

The Devil’s Candy (2015)

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6 of The October 13

I had never heard of this movie before, but after seeing Dangerous Animals, directed by Sean Byrne, I saw on his IMDB page that he had done another horror film called The Devil’s Candy. I was impressed enough with the Dangerous Animals movie, that I looked into this movie. It had a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and was available on Shudder.

With the positives, I added it to the possible films for the October 13 this year. I just watched it and it was a frightening thriller with some solid performances.

According to IMDB, “Metal music, paint, and family are the passions of struggling painter, Jesse, who lives a happy life with his wife, and daughter. Things look brighter when Jesse finds a huge old house, in rural Texas, selling at a very low price, due to its mysterious past. They move in and Jesse converts the barn into a studio. But soon, his work starts taking on a new, darker flavour – and things get even more ominous when the hulking, unbalanced son of the former owners appears on the doorstep. Jesse’s family won’t be safe until they find a way to quiet the Devil himself.“

Pruitt Taylor Vince played Ray Smilie, who lived in the house before. His presence in the film was disturbing every second he was on screen. You felt for him at first, but that does not last long as he begins to do some horrendous things.

The tone of this movie was so uneasy, filled with tension that you were never really sure where the film was heading next and whether or not this was going to turn out to be a positive ending. I like that kind of film and the mood was truly ramped up.

Byrne does a great job directing this and you can see where his storytelling highlights the important details in the film. He is one of our new voices in horror with a couple huge successes under his belt.

Black Phone 2

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The first film, Black Phone, was such a surprise hit and was so great that you knew there would be a sequel at some point, despite the fact that the Grabber, played by Ethan Hawke, was killed.

Of course, Ethan Hawke returned to the film in a supernatural manner as Black Phone 2 dropped in theaters this weekend.

According to IMDB, “As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, his sister begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp known as Alpine Lake.“

Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw returned as Finney and Gwen. Finney was the kid who the Grabber snatched in the last movie and his sister Gwen used her dreams to find where he was being held at. Gwen has had some issues with dreams still and it led them to a winter camp in the mountains.

The tone of this movie is so excellent. It is frightening and anxiety-fueling. There were multiple moments that were very disturbing and unsettling.

Ethan Hawke’s return as the Grabber was awesome. It was a creative way to bring him back. It was a Freddy Krueger type of situation and it was scary.

The performances of all the actors were fantastic. I thought they all did such a great job and helped create the suspense. This was especially the truth for Madeleine McGraw’s Gwen. She had to carry a lot of the real impact of the story.

However, I do think that some of the story became too convoluted and messy. I had some issues with the story that I will not spoil here. Still, the positives of this film overweighed the problems I found in the film.

Black Phone 2 was a solid sequel, though I did not like it as much as the original. It was a strong follow up.

3.6 stars

Daily Countdown: TV Shows #60

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#60

The Twilight Zone

One of the classic anthology series of all time is next up in the Top 100 countdown. The Twilight Zone found a place in the culture of the country with its weird tales of supernatural and uncertain events.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

Rod Sterling was the narrator of this series, starting off the show with his typical monologue featuring the main story they would be telling in the next half and hour (or so. The show had a season of hour long episodes).

There are so many classic episodes that are iconic to the world. The gremlin on the wing of the airplane. The man who only wishes for a chance to read, finds the time at the end of the world, only to break his glasses. It’s a cookbook!!!

I spent the summer of 2023 watching all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone. What a wonderful watch. Some episodes were not as good, some were downright terrible (“The Bard” or “Cavander is Coming,” for example), but most were really great or amazing.

This is the top 10 episodes I ranked that summer. As with any list, things may change over time, but this was the comprehensive list at that time.

#10. “The Howling Man”

#9. “The Dummy”

#8. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” 

#7. “Time Enough at Last”

#6. “Eye of the Beholder”

#5. “A Stop at Willoughby” 

#4. “Living Doll”

#3. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”

#2. “To Serve Man”

#1. “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”

Some of the best actors around spent time in the Twilight Zone including Burgess Meredith, William Shatner, Robert Redford, Bill Mumy, Jack Klugman, Dennis Hopper, Agnes Morehead, Claude Akins, Elizabeth Montgomery, Ed Wynn, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, and Charles Bronson. There were hundreds of other actors that appeared in the show over its five seasons.

There have been many variations and homages to The Twilight Zone over the years, but none of them reached the level of success or quality as the original CBS series.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #38

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Spoilers

The Haunting of Hill House

“Steven Sees a Ghost”

The ending of this first episode gave me chills.

We start a new series this week for the Sunday Morning Sidewalk, and, in honor of the creepy season, I chose The Haunting of Hill House.

What a great start to this series.

I have to say, I think this series does an admirable job of introducing these characters to the viewers. With so many major characters, it can be difficult to know who is who. Then, not only do we met these people in the present day, but also in flashbacks to the time they lived in Hill House. It could easily be very confusing, but I have to say that the show did a solid job of connecting the characters from the past and the present. It did require my attention though.

The show does an especially good job with Steven, as we see him both as a young boy, the oldest of the kids and his protective nature, and an older man, skeptical and struggling.

Then, Nell and the moment at the end was an amazing shock. When Nell stood in that apartment staring blankly at Steven, I knew what was going on (I mean, when you title the episode “Steven Sees a Ghost” and he hasn’t up to this point, well, it is not rocket science), but it did not make it any less impactful.

The middle two girls are the characters that I got the least from during this episode, and I hope they will come into focus more are the series progresses. Luke is a fascinating character and I feel like I have a good grasp on him even with the limited amount of screen time he received.

The father has clearly been affected dramatically and I feel as if we are going to dive deeper into the mother’s suicide in Hill House.

I am intrigued by the mysterious events that the show has introduced to us and, with the mind of writer-director Mike Flanagan, who also was the force behind Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game, and The Life of Chuck, I believe this could lead to something special.

This series is loosely based on the novel of the same name from 1959 by Shirley Jackson.

Tron: Ares

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So there was probably few major blockbusters this year that I was looking forward to less than Tron: Ares. I was not a fan of either of the previous films, Tron and Tron: Legacy, though, to be fair, I would be hard pressed to tell you much of anything about those previous movies because it has been a long time since I watched them. I did walk into the movie with as open of a mind as I could, but I was not anticipating it.

I disliked this movie a lot.

There were two things that I thought were really great. First, the soundtrack/score of the film, done by Nine Inch Nails, was sensational and worked so well for the world of this movie. I had questioned the choice of Nine Inch Nails, but they absolutely ruled here.

The second thing that I can say positively about Tron: Ares is the visual effects are amazing. It looks great, although perhaps there were some scenes when the visual effects were too much because it overpowered what was happening in the scene. For the most part, the action with these effects were top notch.

That is where I draw the line for my positives.

The story of the movie was so basic that it was as if it weren’t even there. Jared Leto was fine, but he did not have to do anything really challenging. The rest of the actors felt as if they were not necessary. So many of the other actors had virtually nothing to do, including Greta Lee and Even Peters, who I usually love. Peters, especially, felt like nothing more than a one note villain that could have been so much more.

There were nothing that really tied this movie to anything that happened in previous films, outside of a forced cameo from Jeff Bridges. That is fine, but it felt as if it went out of the way to avoid the previous films.

I was bored for much of the film and, if I did not have the score to entertain me, I may have fallen asleep. There were no characters worth my time and the story was nothing more than searching for the latest MacGuffin.

I was anxious for this movie to get over with for much of the two hour run time. I did not enjoy my time in the theater with Tron: Ares.

2 stars