I began branching out into what I discovered to be the nearly infinite amount of different genres of horror films: Italian horror, psychological horror, horror comedy, splatter gore, invasion horror. These different movies offered a very unique take on the horror genre and really opened up what the term “scary movie” actually meant to me. Don’t get me wrong, these movies can be terrifying, but they do offer a lot more than simple scares in their storytelling.

Bone Tomahawk (2015) – There are even Western horror movies! Except for some choice scenes, this film is a true Western in every sense of the word. The film follows a group of lawmen led by Kurt Russell who are on a mission to rescue some peaceful townsfolk from prehistoric-appearing cavemen.

There are gorgeous wide open shots of panoramic western plains that make you almost forget you are watching what is classified as a horror movie. Indeed, after the somewhat brutal opening scene the movie eschews nearly all standard horror elements until the film’s finale. The movie is not titled Bone Tomahawk for nothing though. The title object features as the tool of destruction in all of the films grisly bits. These include one scene that, without exaggeration is the single most physically graphic moment I have ever witnessed on film. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Violence aside however, this movie is still worth a watch for both horror fans and seasoned western watchers alike. Just skip the above mentioned scene.

Deathgasm (2015) – Ah yes, the old metal-splatter-horror-comedy subgenre. As its name implies, Deathgasm is a movie not to be taken too seriously. As crazy as it may sound, a movie about two metal heads from New Zealand who accidentally summon an entity from Hell is actually quite silly, and even sweet. Oh yeah and there is a lot of blood. It is called Deathgasm after all. The core characters play well off of each other for occasional dialogue and story-driven moments, but the majority of the film is driven by a kinetic energy reminiscent of, well, a death metal track.

They Look Like People (2015) – This low budget pyschological horror film plays the most like a straight scary movie, but is also incredibly emotionally affecting. It followes a young man named Wyatt who believes that the people around him are turning into monsters that (name drop!) look like people. At the core of the movie is the relationship between Wyatt and his best friend Christian. As Wyatt struggles between his paranoia and preparing himself for the coming invasion, he must decide whether or not to help his friend even though Christian may be a monster himself. The film is very quiet and decisive in its scary moments, which amplifies their effectiveness and builds to a climax that is as heart stopping as it is heart wrenching.

Spring (2014) – What do you get when you combine low-impact yet high caliber dialogue with body horror reminiscent of The Fly? You get Spring, a romantic horror film. Yes, romantic horror films exist. Imagine crossing this year’s Sundance Festival hit Southside with You with John Carpenter’s The Thing. Stretching into even more adventurous territory is Spring , the story a man named Evan who takes a winding vacation to Italy. In his travels, he meets and eventually falls for Louise, a student studying in the field of genetics. That genetics major comes in handy for Louise because it turns out she has bouts of turning into horrific monsters every so often. Other than that, she is a total catch. The movie earns its points in the genuine relationship it builds between Evan and Louise. The viewer completely understands why Evan would stay and offer to help Louise near the end of the film rather than go back home and run away from the challenges she presents.

Holidays (2016) – Anthology horror films are notoriously unbalanced, which should surprise no one. If you get multiple directors together for a film there are sure to be some masterful segments as well as a few floppy duds. Holidays contains eight short films that pay homage to some of the more disturbing elements of our favorite times of the year.

The standout segment is Anthony Scott Burns’ Father’s Day. In the short film, a young woman named Carol receives a cassette tape from her father who she previously thought was dead. The tape contains directions from her father on how to find him as well as an explanation for why he had to leave. Jocelin Donahue gives an emotional and nearly silent performance as a daughter who is simultaneously stunned, grieved, and hopeful at the prospect of finding her father.

Likewise Michael Gross is a standout talent as the perfectly pitched dad, lending an air of fatherly love as well as morbid longing to his voice portrayal of Carol’s father. The conclusion of Father’s Day is left ambiguous, but this does not lessen the impact of the segment as a whole.

I absolutely hate when people get down on horror movies. With such a tremendous variety to choose from, everyone can find one that matches their taste. If none of these worked for you, don’t worry. I’ll be back with more choice horror gems later this month. Happy scary movie month!

Watch and Talk is a column about movies. It seeks to not only review movies, but to simply talk about them. Watch and Talk looks at the various cultural impacts and aspects that movies can have.

The post Watch and Talk: Scary Movie Month appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Remember when the horror movie scene was a barren, frightfully not frightening hellscape of slasher sequels and monster movies so B-grade that they wouldn’t even cut it as celebrities in a VH1 reality show? Me neither. I wasn’t allowed to watch scary movies when I was a kid.

Thankfully the horror film genre has seen a significant uptick in the last few years. Aficionados will tell you that there is no revolution happening as the indie horror scene has been pumping out original work for years. But when studio films reach that point, something amazing is going on.

Don’t Breathe, the latest in a slew of studio horror films that have garnered critical praise in recent years, keeps the nightmares rolling with a taut and tense home invasion story where the invaders are the ones at the end of the knife. The film is succinct in establishing its characters, giving us just enough information to actually invest ourselves in their actions.

A trio of bandits, Alex, Rocky, and Money, are eking out a living performing small time robberies in various homes throughout Detroit. Alex, the straight arrow, uses his dad’s security company connections to pick and choose the easiest houses and establishes a set of rules to keep the robbers safe.

While Alex is more tied to Detroit through his father, Money and Rocky seek to move away and establish a new life outside of the grimy wasteland that is Detroit’s urban center. In order to make that move, some of Alex’s rules will need to be broken.

Money hears about an old, blind war veteran that lives in a decent house in an abandoned suburb of the city and who happens to be sitting on a pile of three hundred thousand dollars.

What first seems to be an easy score turns out to be a gritty and disturbing journey into the abyss. The setting works perfectly with the heroes’ predicament, turning Detroits’ seemingly undisturbed urban jungle into a war zone where there is no where to run, much less hide. To say more of the plot would do a tremendous disservice to Fede Alvarez‘s film. It is superb in its pacing, in that it hardly lets up about twenty minutes into the film.

Add to that a run time of only 88 minutes and the film barely gives you time to catch your breath. Noteworthy sequences include a one shot take of the entire house in which many of its important contents are laid out, unknown to our invading protagonists. The camera lingers on a pegboard filled with gruesome tools, a gun carefully taped under a bed, as well as a bell and locked door that you know are important, but are not yet sure how.

The film is masterful and thrilling, with a memorable plot that contains just enough dark twists and turns to grab and hold viewers attention. A few carefully doled out laughs rounds out the experience. Do yourself a favor and watch Don’t Breathe with a crowd. The shared tension with fellow audience members makes the viewing experience that much more entertaining. If you can’t find a crowd, enjoy watching this one by yourself, in the dark. Just remember to breathe.

Watch and Talk is an alternative look at film. It is a column that discusses movies from all different genres. Films are not only reviewed, they are simply talked about. Watch and Talk looks at not only the entertainment value of movies, but also at their cultural aspects and impacts.

The post Watch and Talk: Don’t Breathe appeared first on KRUI Radio.

If you consider yourself a fan of horror films, you have probably seen some pretty messed up stuff. You have seen so many limbs cut off, eyes gouged out, and demonic possession-enhanced projectile vomit that these things don’t even affect you anymore.

Whenever I’m talking to my friends, coworkers, or even my wife, I feel like I have to avoid divulging the most juicy details for fear of people thinking I am a serial killer. There is a reason why no one liked Gabe from The Office.

“Why do you watch so much fucked up shit?” This is a question I have heard and asked myself the many times. I honestly don’t know. I just find it entertaining. No other genre of movie requires such defending. No one asks me why I watch comedies or action movies. The answers are obvious: I like laughing and watching shit blow up. So allow me to get a little meta-cognitive on you and figure out just why people enjoy watching horror movies.

Like comedies and action movies, there seems to be an obvious answer: people like scary movies because they like to be scared. Not necessarily scared all the time, but in a controlled setting. While that may be the case for some people, it’s not always the case for me. I will visit a haunted house around Halloween or have a prolonged stay with my in-laws to get that feeling of primal fear, but I don’t usually get it in movies. That primordial rush of terror some get when viewing spooky stuff may be reason enough to enjoy horror movies, but I think there is more there. Perhaps there is a more personal link.

When I ask what types of movies scare people the most, I generally get a similar answer: films that portray our real life fears. Home invasion movies (The Strangers), films involving personal paranoia (Enemy), or movies that center around our more modern insecurities (Unfriended). Hush, a 2016 Netflix offering is a great new example of this very real type of fear people get when watching scary movies. In the film, a deaf-mute author retreats to the woods to finish her next book, where she is stalked and attacked by an unknown assailant. The film plays on our fears of the unknown with both the killer and the isolated setting, as well as the extremely uncomfortable feeling we get when our personal space is violated. The fact that our protagonist cannot speak or hear makes the danger even more threatening. The film was a triumph, and many people would likely agree with the fact that is was, indeed, scary. I found the film to be taut with tension, creepiness, and even riveting at times, but never truly scary.

Maybe I’m just broken. After being exposed to The Evil Dead around the age of five by my mom (what the fuck was she thinking), perhaps I just don’t scare easy when it comes to movies. Or maybe I’m not looking to be frightened. I like to think I’m looking for new experiences or gut reactions that I have never found in other types of films. When you watch a Cristopher Nolan movie, you want to come away with this intangible sense of awe along with the feeling that you are not 100% sure what just happened in the past two hours. When you watch a Guy Ritchie film, you want to be lost in a slick and darkly comic world where, yeah, people die left and right, but it’s all in good fun.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PNLVp66leng

It’s the same with horror movies. Some aim for pure terror, a feeling you are not going to get nearly anywhere else, unless you are a professional skydiver with short-term memory loss. Think Hellraiser, The Conjuring, or Dead  Silence. Other horror movies aim for something similar, but not necessarily for mile-a-minute scares. It Follows doesn’t attempt to shock you with gory visuals, jump scares, or the other common horror tropes. The film aims for a more perilous sense of dread. In doing so the film relies on more open shots compared to the claustrophobic nature of most horror films. Rosemary’s Baby is another movie that is not trying to terrify its audience. It’s a slow burn picture focused on the paranoia of its lead actor, and as such, functions not only as a horror film but also as a character-driven drama.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are horror comedies. Movies that are meant to make you laugh while simultaneouly questioning your moral fiber for thinking that a guy being fed to a wood chipper was funny in the first place. That simultaneous feeling of unease and amusement is a good thing! We all saw Inside Out, so we know our most memorable experiences are not comprised of one emotion. If a movie makes you sense something new, I think you should embrace it, no matter how weird, horrific, or unnatural it may be. We grow primarily through new experiences, and I think that horror films are a quick and effective, if not always easy, method for getting these new experiences. So go ahead and queue up a scary movie. And if you think all my talk on “feelings” and “new experiences” is bullshit, at least you’ll be scared (maybe)!

Watch and Talk is an alternative look at film. It is a column that discusses movies from all different genres. Movies are not necessarily reviewed, they are simply talked about. Watch and Talk looks at not only the entertainment value of various films, but also the cultural aspects and impacts that films can have.

The post Watch and Talk: Why Do We Like Horror? appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Since its creation over a year ago, the “Late Shift at the Grindhouse” series has become a staple of FilmScene’s programming. The series has slowly grown a dedicated and consistent fan base that turns out every week to see some of the worst movies to ever grace the silver screen. The theater opened at 10pm, and began with a half an hour montage of old pre-movie theater commercials and trailers. Some trailers were for clearly fake movies, Like Shriek of the Easter Beast, while others were of movies that were somehow actually made, like Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Shiek. They also included some trailers for films that would later be shown at FilmScene, and overall it was the most entertaining pre-movie roll I’ve ever seen.

After the trailers, the curators of the series had their weekly prize drawings for those who purchased tickets. Previous pre-movie rolls, old DVDs, and posters from cult classics were given away. I was even lucky enough to win a copy of Blood Trails, not to be confused with Blood Trials, which has apparently been previously screened there. Finally, the weekly “punishment prize” was distributed, as some poor unfortunate sap was stuck with a brand new copy of Agent Cody Banks, starring the legendary Frankie Muniz.

Lisa Jane Persky, whose photoshow X-Offenders will be on display as a part of Mission Creek, gave a brief introduction to the film. She began by apologizing for it, and saying it was by far the worst thing she’s ever been a part of. This, of course, was met with cheers and applause from the racous audience. She offered to answer any questions about the filming of the movie, but also warned that she probably had more questions than anyone else. She also told of a few awkward stories of meeting the members of KISS, and how for years after this film, no one who worked for them was allowed to mention it in front of them.

After the introduction, the lights went down and the film began. From the opening sequence, it was easy to tell what kind of movie this was going to be. Images of the members of KISS were super imposed over shots of an amusement park, supposedly to make them look larger than life. “I Wanna Rock n’ Roll All Night” cranked through the speakers, and the audience roared with laughter. Normally, I hate almost any interaction or feedback from an audience in a movie theater, but I could definitely make an exception for movies like this. It was clear that this movie was going to be cheesy, campy, and generally crappy, and that the audience was going to love it.

The film’s plot is convoluted and generally nonsensical, but from what I could gather it told the story of a young woman who, with the help of KISS, tries to free her boyfriend from the control of an evil scientist/amusement park developer who plans on starting a riot by cloning the members of KISS. It’s a strange mix of Jurrasic Park, Phantom of the Opera, and a live convert video. Of course, KISS decides to keep kayfabe in this movie and retain their alter-ego identities as some sort of superhumans powered by magical talisman. Gene Simmons has super human strength and can spit fire, Ace Frehley can teleport, Paul Stanley has some sort of lazer…vision..powers, and Peter Criss just kind of makes cat puns.

As you can guess, this movie is total crap. But it’s a fun kind of crap, especially when seen with the right audience, in the right mood, with the right amount of booze in them. The special effects are atrocious and laughable, the performance of the KISS members is pathetic, and the soundtrack is actually pretty rocking despite being completely out of synch with the emotional tone of the scenes. If crappy movies are your thing, then KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park is definitely one to check out.

Click here to check out the rest of the lineup for the Mission Creek Festival.

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