Reviews

For what I'd assumed would just be another fun, but daffy 80's creature feature, From Beyond has a lot more on its mind than expected. The creature and gore effects are fantastic, yes, but the script is much smarter than I'd expected and the performances are equally strong with Barbara Crampton showing that she can play a very different character from the one she played in Re-Animator just one year prior.

I didn't expect a sequel to a movie I loathed to be watchable, let alone sort of fantastic, but here we are and I'm ready to say that Annabelle: Creation is a surprise in many ways. A lot of the scares work and I got a few chills here and there. Even better, many of the characters are somewhat interesting and easy to root for. I doubt it'll become some classic in the years to come, but I'm almost positive it'll be put on that rare list of movie sequels that are better than the originals.

Before he got his infamous hockey mask in the next sequel, Jason had a different and much creepier disguise in this movie. I'm not sure if that's the reason I think this is one of the better sequels, but it plays a big part in it. The story is basically the same as all the other movies in this franchise, but we have creepy sackhead Jason and a great final girl, Ginny, who is rightly considered one of the best adversaries for Jason in the entire series. It also helps that the rest of the cast is equally as likable and you feel bad for them when they're killed. At this point, we were still rooting for the victims and not Jason.

If you're new to the genre, I couldn't think of anything better to get your feet wet. If you're a lifelong fan, there's not much of interest here that you haven't heard before. It's still entertaining enough and feels like one of those VH1 I Love The 80's documentaries with a bunch of talking heads giving their opinions on mostly mainstream films from that era. Don't expect many surprises and you should be fine.

It's hard to find a movie more aggressively 80's than Chopping Mall. You've got the big hair, the gore, the nudity, the shopping malls, and the silly but charming effects. At under 80 minutes, it gets in and gets out quickly without making you feel like you're wasting any of your time. Better yet, the filmmakers seems to know how silly all of these is and they present everything with a tongue in their cheek. It's hard to imagine someone not having a good time with this one, especially 80's horror fans.

I hadn't seen this since it first came out and I was immediately surprised by how little gore there is in this. It's all mostly suggestion and the film is all the better for it. Some of the acting is spotty in portions of the movie, but it really knows how to ratchet up the suspense and it's much smarter than I'd remembered. Funny how, after a franchise of lesser films, you forget how great the original is.

Strangely bland slasher movie without any suspense and with characters so unlikable that I thought the filmmakers were attempting some sort of satire at first. There's a good twist on the final girl trope towards the end, but you'll have to stay awake to see and that might be easier said than done.

My first taste of Andy Milligan and I think I liked it. This has lo-fi regional filmmaking written all over it and it feels like a bunch of friends rented an old house for the weekend and decided to borrow some costumes from the local community theater and make a movie.

Every character is somewhat hateful, the performances range from alright to awful, but some of the gore effects aren't half bad including one nasty severed hand bit.

If you allow yourself to be absorbed by the atmosphere of this movie and pretend it's all one terrifying nightmare, you'll probably enjoy The Beyond. If you keep poking holes in the plot and complaining about the acting and dubbing, you'll probably want to shut it off 15 minutes in. Fulci isn't always one of my favorite directors, but when he's good, he's really good and this is one of his best, most unforgettable works.

The current state on the world has gotten me thinking about this movie a lot, so I gave it a rewatch last night and it still holds up as one of the best films of the 80's. Sweet, good natured, and exciting with a fantastic cast. I can't see anyone else in these roles except for Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney.

Not as awful as expected, but still lacks a little punch. With such an inherently silly concept and considering there's no build up or dread to any of the horror moments, they'd have been better off assigning each character a gory Final Destination-esque demise, going for an R rating, and having a little more fun with everything.

A great throwback to the 80's that gets it right. The costumes and hair don't overdo it and the cast looks like people you'd actually run into circa 1982 or so. The slow burn approach works like gangbusters with the film building to a genuinely unnerving and intense climax.

Not my favorite of Hooper's work, but there are some interesting moments and a wonderful musical score. The opening homage to Halloween is charming and the creature effects are great, but it doesn't have the wild intensity of Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Eaten Alive.

Overripe performances litter this strange and unusual horror tale about Catholic guilt, repression, and violence. I can only give this movie the highest praise one could give any film - there's nothing else quite like it. It won't be everyone's cup of tea and many might be turned off by the theatrical performances, the longer-than-average run time, and perhaps even the style of the film, but they'll be missing out.

It's Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II without the humor or style as interpreted by the SyFy Channel. This isn't always a bad thing. Some moments really land and some are laughable like the big with all the CGI spiders.

Can't hold a candle to the original, but at least it brings back Loretta Devine and that kidney heist scene is one of the best set pieces from post-Scream slasherdom. It's sad that the rest of the movie never rises to that level, but it's not like I felt I wasted a lot of time by watching this. There are good ideas in there.

This movie is bad without a scare or moment of tension in sight. I don't see how anyone can argue that, but even a bad movie can have great elements and when that Ennio Morricone score kicks in, you'd almost believe Exorcist II was a masterpiece.

Well orchestrated in terms of script and performances, but the tacky CGI took me out of every potential scare sequence. They feel like they were brought in from a children's cartoon rather than from the very depths of hell. Another glaring example of why practical effects are so much better than computer effects.

Obviously well made and Davis gives a performance for the ages, but this one didn't grab me like it did other people. The annoying child didn't help. The title creature was better off creeping around in the shadows.

Fantastic grindhouse trash. In any other movie, Ruth Roman's performance alone would be enough to make a movie worthwhile, but when you add in all the other crazy stuff happening in this movie, it turns The Baby into a must see event.

Nicole Kidman's one major scene (that was in every trailer) where she tells her daughter exactly how she feels about her might be one of the most bone chilling things I've ever seen and it just made me love her even more. Didn't think that was possible, but here we are.

As stupid and brainless as movies get, but could I say I wasn't entertained? Absolutely not! This feels like a movie that could have only been made at a very specific point in time and watching it was like a trip down memory lane.

A stellar assortment of familiar faces fills out the cast of this post-Scream slasher that seems less interested in that era's self-reflective humor and more interested in the relationships between the women and giving the audience a refreshingly old school style slash fest. Director Jamie Blanks fills every scene with tons of style and the killer's cupid masked garb is pretty unnerving in the best way.

Watchable in a film school project kind of way, but its obsession with trying to do everything exactly like Hitchcock's version leaves it cold and emotionless. Who'd have ever thought seeing Marion Crane slashed to death in a shower would inspire nothing more than a simple shrug? As a stand alone movie, it doesn't work very well.

The kind of true insanity only a regional horror film from the 70's could conjure up. The plot is just Psycho with a twist (instead of a mother, we have a sister the lead character is obsessed with) and a little dash of homoeroticism. The lead actor is great at playing someone really cringey you want to look away from, but can't. He's wonderfully awkward. It has some pacing problems, but it's definitely not a movie one forgets as soon as the credits roll.