12/1/16 - The Shunned House (2003)

So, this hasn't happened before... I was very ill today. I had some sort of bug or food poisoning or something like that where I was all sore and had the chills and whatnot. Not the ideal conditions for watching a movie. But, you do what you gotta do. I looked for something I didn't really care about, since it seemed like that I would be drifting in and out of it. Luckily for me, I picked The Shunned House - I stayed conscious for the whole thing, but the film sort of drifted in and out of itself. Let me explain:

The Shunned House is a sort of loose adaptation of three H.P. Lovecraft stories - "The Shunned House," "The Music of Erich Zann," and "Dreams in the Witchhouse." The film tells these three tales in a very non-linear way - in the "present" day, a couple is investigating an old house with a horrifying past (murders, mutilations, disappearances... all that good stuff). Basically, we are constantly cutting back to scenes from the house's past, which you eventually piece together into these separate stories. It's a discombobulating way to proceed, but it also kind of works. For some reason, equating "Lovecraft" with "Doesn't make sense" works for me. For being (obviously) low budget, The Shunned House gets a good mood going, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked.

11/1/16 - Crazy Eights (2006)

Crazy Eights didn't do a heck of a lot for me. It's got an okay premise: A group of childhood friends reunite after one of them dies - a la It - and of course they have a shared secret. Maybe even a supernatural one! And we know the secret has to do with "experimental facilities in the South" where children were basically bought from their parents, because the title card tells us so. While the whole "medical experiments on kids" angle is kind of cool, it's dealt with rather awkwardly and not in a satisfying way.  I almost wonder if the information got on a title card because they didn't bother explaining it well in the film? It's treated in Crazy Eights like a slow unveiling, and usually you don't have a title card spoil a reveal...so whatever. The important thing is that there's a ghost, and it kills people.

10/18/16 - Zombie Werewolves Attack (2009)

I watched Zombie Werewolves Attack because I was looking for something on Amazon Prime that was (A) short, and (B) made in the 80s. (To keep things fresh during this movie a day thing, I try to not watch too many movies made in the same era consecutively.) The Roku Amazon app had this listed as being made in 1984. But that's a pretty obvious typo, and this is clearly a 2000's shot-on-consumer-grade camera deal. But I guess qualification (A) won out, because I finished the darn thing.

10/7/16 - The Dread (2007)

So I guess I was tempting fate by mostly recommending Bleed yesterday. Despite its flaws (and very low imdb rating), I kind of dug its kitchen sink approach, and could easily look past its iffy story telling choices and confusing plot points. But today brought me The Dread, which is even lower rated on imdb. And while it had the same approach in terms of mashing up genres (slasher/monster/ghost, in this case?) and a similar disinterest in explaining much story-wise, it didn't fare nearly as well.

It's clearly a cheaper film than Bleed, and considering The Dread was made about 10 years prior it's not going to look as good. I think indie films like this get dumped on more than they should, but even when a taken with a considerably sized grain of salt (I want to take it easy on films in this budget range, you know?), The Dread is not very good.

10/2/16 - The Wicker Man (2006)

As I get older, I find myself getting less and less upset with remakes. At this point, it's like getting pissed at the wind. (My dog has been known to do this, barking wildly at the swaying branches.) Or maybe getting mad at the current state of politics. It is what it is, there's no changing it, it's not really worth expending energy on.

However, even with that liberal (in the internet age, at least) take on the subject, I have a hard time trying to figure out why anyone would try to remake The Wicker Man. It's got such a good reputation that it would be virtually impossible for you to come out in front of it - it's setting yourself up for failure, even if your movie is pretty good on its own. (Please note: this one is not.) There's a reason that The Classics remain untouched, and yeah, the original Wicker Man is a Classic. BUT, say you take that ill-advised leap and decide to do it - why would you change so much that made it great in the first place? While it's true that the bones of the story are the same here in the 2006 version, so much of what I really dug about the original doesn't make it here - the atmosphere, the use of music, general unease (here it's much more overt), the religiousness of the main character... it gets to a point that it should really just be a different movie.

And who could forget the CGI bees?