Tag: Horror

Hey, didn’t I just talk about this? Yeah, last week or so! The weird genre of watching a bunch of people famous from TV shows make a movie together. I just talked about it with Adult Beginners, and now I can talk about it again with The Lazarus Effect.

This time we have a guy from The League, a girl from House, and a guy from Community.

The good news about all of this is I have never really seen a group of TV stars do a horror movie. It is almost always, 100% of the time, an independent comedy drama where not a lot happens.

But this is a horror! Time to party because it is new and different!

Science! Party! Happy times!

This isn’t just a scary movie. It is a scary SCIENCE movie, about science going to far and playing god.

The scientists in question are Frank (Mark Duplass) and Zoe (Olivia Wilde), who are not only partners, but also dating. Oh snap. Personal lives mixing with work lives. How scandalous. They started their university research into something about coma patients, but now they are on to something even bigger and more sciency. Instead of helping coma patient, it might bring the dead back to life. Kind of fucked up, right? After doing some science stuff, they are finally able to get it to work on a dog. They had some assistants of course, Niko (Donald Glover) and Clay (Evan Peters), for more witnesses.

Speaking of witnesses, they even have a girl with a video camera, Eva (Sarah Bolger), so no one cries bullshit after success.

Well, obviously the dog is now alive, but the dog is acting a bit weird. Aggression based weirdness mostly. Oh well.

What’s that? They can’t do more research because it is awkward and sneaky and some pharmaceutical company is going to take it all? What’s that, Zoe is suddenly dead thanks to an accident while trying to re-do the experiment? Oh my goodness, Zoe is back alive? That is fantastic. It works on humans. Now they can find out what it is like to die and what she can tell them and hopefully she doesn’t turn all psycho and kill everyone.

That wouldn’t be okay!

I would also probably hide if Olivia Wilde came walking down the hall.

The first thing you will notice about The Lazarus Effect is that it is unusually short. Some horror films are short because everything takes place during a small amount of time, like in Unfriended, and it worked very nicely. Unfriended also got to the “horror” part of the film pretty early on, so there wasn’t a lot of time wasted.

This film, however, dawdles pretty hard core. They had what felt like several different plot lines going on to lead up to the sudden human trial to save Zoe’s life, but that also took up at least a third if not half of the film. That would be the plot about getting the science right, dealing with a slowly more aggressive dog, and the company coming in to take their work and having them lose everything. That is a big chunk of the movie, but none of it is really that scary. So that is pretty disappointing. You would think with less than 80 minutes of film, that sort of thing can be rushed or already assumed to get us to the part most viewers would care about. For instance, it can start with the formula just working on a dog? Yeah, that would give us more time to focus on scary stuff!

But alas, it is a mostly non terrifying horror movie which is a shame. The acting also is nothing special, and rarely is in a horror film.

The reason I am giving it the average passing score is that at least it tried to make a reasonable and not completely shitty plot. The main issue is that the plot seemed to also forget the fact that it is a horror movie. I need two things to happen in a horror film to give it a rating above a 2. It has to be both scary AND entertaining. This one has only minor scary parts near the end, and is average on the entertainment.

Should there be a sequel, which I doubt, it should be able to deliver more scares as we should be passed all the set up. But it also doesn’t really deserve a chance to make up the lack of horror.

2 out of 4.

Rodney Ascher is a weird guy. I don’t talk about directors of documentaries a lot, but this is important. I have technically reviewed three of his works on my site. He did the Q segment of The ABCs of Death 2, which I honestly barely remember. He also did the documentary Room 237 which felt a lot like torture. That is a very polarizing movie and whatever a lot of people got out of it, I got none of it.

And now he is directing The Nightmare documentary, which is a bit of a hybrid documentary. It involves real people, telling presumably real stories and anecdotes, but also recreations of what they are talking about. At this point you might be asking, “Well, what are they talking about?!” and if you were, you aren’t very good at context clues.

They are talking about nightmares of course! But not any of your sissy girl falling out of bed nightmares. No, a much serious and scarier phenomenon known as sleep paralysis which affects dozens of people world wide. Dozens!

It is also one of the scariest things I have ever heard about that could potentially be a giant elaborate ruse to scare me.

Holy fuck, it is working too!

I don’t remember when I first heard about sleep paralysis, but it was probably 4 or more years ago on the internet. A lot of people told similar stories, about how they would sometimes dream of themselves lying in bed but they couldn’t move their body at all. They would try to, but nothing would work. Some of them would imagine some dark entity/cat/demon sitting on their chest, preventing from moving. That sounds terrifying enough, but it isn’t even the scariest parts.

Others could see intruders in their room. Literal dark shadow shapes, static shapes, alien shapes, whatever their messed up psychosis wants. It could involve the creepiest conversations. It could involve other people they know and love. But they just have to lay there and take it.

I don’t think my crazy ramblings trying to explain it all are the best way to learn about this stuff though. Personal anecdotes from those who experience it with vivid detail? That is the way to go. Or better yet, anecdotes with recreations just to terrify you even more.

The editing on this hybrid documentary was great. The music department and the recreations were very on point and would have had me on the edge of my seat the entire time if I was in a chair. If you must know, I was definitely laying down as I watched this documentary.

Of course, this documentary might not be the best idea either. There are reports of people gaining some sleep paralysis after hearing about it from someone else. So I might have screwed a portion of the readers of this review, and for that I don’t apologize. These are the type of risks you must take when you go to a site owned and operated by Gorgons, after all.

4 out of 4.

Another movie that attached it itself to the Hype Train Caboose, It Follows was able to to launch itself from limited release to a full scale wide release in a matter of weeks. Weeks! With a wide release, unfortunately, came a lack of VOD release which was also supposed to happen.

Which is why I took so long to see it! Family life, very busy.

I made sure when I finally got to see it though that I maximized the potential scariness factor. I watched in on the scariest of days at the scariest of times. You know, Wednesday afternoon.

Although watching a horror movie in the middle of a pool might have Wednesday beat.

Girl Jay (Maika Monroe) meets boy Hugh (Jake Weary). Girl dates boy a few times. Boy is a bit weird. Boy lied about his name and home. Boy and girl have sweet sensual car sex. Boy chloroforms girl and ties her up.

Things are not going good for Jay! So when she finally wakes up, Hugh is acting even weirder than normal. Apparently having sex with her has passed “It” on to her. What is It? Well, he doesn’t really know. But apparently It is an entity that will walk towards her always and eventually try to kill her. Yep. And if she dies, it will then go back after Hugh. He got it from a random one night stand. See. Jay just needs to pass it on to someone else, tell them the same thing, and hope it travels far enough from her to never bother her again.

If she believes him. Until then, it is just a terrible rape from a crazy man who lied to her.

Until you know, she actually sees this thing coming toward her at several different times, and no one else can. She enlists her friends help, but they can only do so good, not being able to see it and all. She has her sister (Lili Sepe), a boy who crushes on her (Keir Gilchrist), a neighborhood boy with a car (Daniel Zovatto), and another friend (Olivia Luccardi).

Do you see It? DO YOU SEE?

Alright, imagine if you will a regular-ish person walking towards you, potentially naked, maybe slightly hurt. Just walking. That isn’t too bad. It is like a single zombie that only you can see. Mike Myers was scary because he was a fast walker, had a weapon and a mask.

Well, I was surprised at how frighting it could be. It Follows implores basically zero cheap jump scares. Everything is open and obvious. Sure, a lot of fear comes from the fact that the entity is now suddenly in the general area, but it is never “suddenly there in front of the camera omg scary!”. But this movie isn’t just about fears, or just an interesting STI allegory. It is about the fear of death. It is a bit about the fear of the future in general.

But also this movie is about EXCELLENT camera work and a killer (heh) soundtrack. Most scenes are nicely set up to feel both how big and small the world around you can feel. If you like synthesizers, you will feel at home in this movie.

Again, let me reiterate. I was terrified at many different times throughout the film, fearing for the protagonist and wondering how she could get out of the mess. You know, without sleeping around and passing on the curse to other people. That would be rude, to trick people into sex knowing you would put something like that on them.

Fuck. It Follows was so good, it blew away everything horror wise in 2014. I didn’t give a single scary movie last year a 4 out of 4. Half the year done and I already have one! Maybe Sinister 2 can recreate its predecessor. Highly unlikely, but you never know!

4 out of 4.

Final day of Blackweek which also means I can pick almost anything I want! After all, since Black Mass isn’t out yet, I don’t have any other super new 2015 movies to review.

And I really had no idea what I wanted to watch. So as I often do in this situation, I went to Netflix and just searched around. This time was a bit easier, as I also got to search for the word “Black” and narrow down my results pretty significantly.

The reason I settled on Black Rock is for a few reasons. One, I didn’t have any horror-esque movies this week, just a thriller. And honestly a lot of horror movies have “Black” in the title. Secondly, out of all five or so movies I could have actually picked from that fit all my requirements, this is the only one I had heard of. With people I knew in it. And it wasn’t made for TV!

And familiarity leads to happy reviews because I can name drop facts or past reviews the actors have been in! We call that movie synergy.

We call this boat workingy.

Girls just wanna have fu-un. That’s what they really waaa-a-aa-aannnt. And to not die. But back up a bit.

Sarah (Kate Bosworth), Lou (Lake Bell), and Abby (Katie Aselton) have been friends since they were kids. And when they were kids, they used to go to a local island to play games, build forts, do outdoorsy things, probably experiment sexually. I don’t know, I don’t know what kids do on islands. The only book I read about it was pretty fucked up though.

They have some issues now, but they want to put the past behind and enjoy each others company. Well, while out gallivanting and arguing, they run into three hunters (Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson, Anslem Richardson), and hang out with them. They party with them! These guys all fought in the war too, but they are back. And then they DRINK with them. Well, one of our ladies gets flirty and starts to make out with one of our dudes. But he goes farther than she wants, and won’t stop when she wants him to stop. So she flails and hits him on the head with a rock.

Fatally. A black rock, maybe. Who can tell, it was night time. Other two hunters don’t like this and beat up the ladies and don’t know what to do. Well, they end up escaping, so now dudes with guns are looking for them on an island and they don’t have anything to help them. Ruh roh. Fucking hunters.

This is how you all must feel, having received zero movie synergy after my tease up.

Wait wait wait wait wait let me check something. The rating. “Rated R for some strong violence, pervasive language, sexual references and brief graphic nudity”.

BRIEF GRAPHIC NUDITY MY ASS (heh). That means a flash of a body. There was about ten minutes of naked women in the last 30 minutes of the movie. Nothing was brief about that. Did the MPAA not watch that? It was a very surprising scene, needless to say. It was a scene that you’d imagine as being very quick but you know. Ten fucking minutes. It is an eighty minute movie. A huge percentage of it is just nakedness.

Speaking of how long this movie is, I honestly feel the biggest issue is that it should be even shorter. There was not enough story to make it last. The first part of the movie, the set up, the trip to the island, the chick bonding. I don’t remember how long that lasted, but it just seemed to drag. It obviously started to speed up once we introduced the dudes, but the intro was slow.

Overall, I was surprised by how brutal the whole movie felt. It wasn’t a normal thriller/horror, as it was going for a realistic vibe. And it showed. You see the ladies up there? Beat up, cut up, black eyes. It only gets worse. Simple things seem to take people down and nothing is super movie like.

It was so real, I definitely wouldn’t want to watch it again, let’s say that. But also, not fantastic enough to warrant a second viewing either.

2 out of 4.

Are you excited? They made a sequel to The Woman in Black!!

Why do I hear crickets? Must be my refusal to try to buy more bug spray. I personally have no idea what anyone else thought about The Woman In Black, and I am far too lazy right now to look something like that up, but I thought it was a dull. Harry Potter did nothing for me. Just was an period piece British film, with a shitty ending, and a shitty everything else also. I would have never guessed a sequel could have happened.

Because now we have The Woman In Black 2: Angel of Death. I have to assume Great Britain went bananas over the first film. I am pretty sure it was a remake or a book or something first, and they probably like anything set in their country.

From what I can tell this thing isn’t even really related to the first movie. Different actors/characters. Maybe a different ghost, but that would be Troll 2 levels of dumb. Honestly, if it has anything to do with the first film, I wouldn’t even remember.

Oh it’s a creepy looking doll that a kid likes. That’s normal in horror now, I guess.

This sequel takes place in World War II, which is either before or after the first film. Again, I remember jack shit about it. We have a very universal concept here. Britain is getting bombed occasionally, so a lot of kids have lost family. Orphans and double orphans. Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox) is a teacher of orphans, and their school is going to go leave the bustling city of London to live in the countryside instead. You know, where the Nazis should not be bombing. Her headmistress (Helen McCrory), Eve, and a bunch of kids head out to live in an abandoned building, to be safe.

But of course they won’t be safe. This is a horror movie sequel. And it is the country so we have inherently creepy looking people like Hermit Jacob (Ned Dennehy) running around. Thankfully there is a hunky man, a pilot, Harry (Jeremy Irvine), and another guy, the air raid warden (Adrian Rawlins). Gosh, could they be anymore safe?

Anyways. Haunted mansion type movie. Little kids going missing. Mute kid (Oaklee Pendergast) is of course involved, cause that bitch can’t talk.

But oh nelly can he scream. Suuu-eeeee! Suuuu-eeee!

Yawn yawn yawn. No surprise. A sequel to a movie I disliked I didn’t find great. But man, it was just so dang boring. And British. Not that British things can’t be scary. But this doesn’t at all feel like a concept worth even creating. They didn’t add anything new to the horror genre.

It just seems like a ham fisted concept, that vaguely is related to another film, to make money. It is literally Troll 2ing us. Right in front of our eyes. Oh, the ghost is a woman in black, who hates kids? Fits. Done.

Fuckkkk. It is just. It is full of boring characters, boring plot, boring scares, and nothing new. Throwing in a bad ass subtitle doesn’t make a bad ass film. It makes it generic.

Generic horror is maybe worse than generic comedy. Maybe. It’s just the level of mediocrity that we should all avoid in order to make it through the night, actually entertained. Boooo boring. Yay entertainment.

1 out of 4.

I like history. By that, I of course mean History I can relate too. You know, western cultural stuff. Cough cough.

But hey, old Egyptian history is super close to that. It is like, pre-Greece. Similar to Mesopotamian stuff. So it kind of fits the narrative.

Of course, The Pyramid probably doesn’t have any real history in it. But it might make reference to pharaohs, or some important event. As long as it tries. As Above, So Below was a horror movie that tried to add some historical elements into it, along with a couple decent fear moments. So I am definitely giving The Pyramid a chance. As long as it isn’t aliens.

(Sighs) It’s always aliens.

And you thought there was nothing new to discover about pyramids. But thanks to science! and technology! they have actually found a NEW Egyptian pyramid. Who are they? Dr. Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw) and Dr. Miles Holden (Denis O’Hare), a father/daughter Archaeologist team. This pyramid was discovered underneath the sand, so it is way older than the other pyramids. Old enough to be buried! Oh man! The discoveries!

So many discoveries, that they are making a documentary about its discovery, the digging up, and hopefully its juicy/sexy insides. Sunni (Christa Nicola) will be the director/star, and she wants an emmy. Also has Fitzie (James Buckley) as a camera man. They even have a 3 million dollar robot thing to walk the halls before anyone else and discover traps, or pit falls, or whatever.

But unfortunately, Egypt is having unrest. A lot of political turmoil, so the crew is going to have to stop before they can go inside. Well that sucks. Maybe they can just quickly have the robot go in real quick to get some footage before they wait for some time. Maybe they can quickly go in there to get the robot once it breaks down. Maybe they can get out once they get lost and walls seem to be closing in around them. Maybe…

Also featuring Amir K and Faycal Attougui.

My daddy always said, “If you find a human size hole, you should crawl through it. For Science.”

This film for the most part is of the “found footage” genre. We have a couple cameras for documentary / science reasons, and a robot with cameras! But also, a lot of scenes are just regular camera scenes too. It kind of just flowed how it wanted to (See picture 2), and went with a regular camera to make a better movie. And you know what, good for them. End of Watch did that, and End of Watch was fucking amazing.

But the found footage I don’t think was done great either. Annoying in all the wrong (right? How do I make this sentence?) places.

The actors weren’t too great. Seemed like another case of smart people, dumb decisions.

But overall, I still think the movie was okay. Why? Because I really like “the villain”. The Pyramid has secrets. I will just say we aren’t stuck with aliens, nor are we stuck with some lame mummy. They at least attempted to do something cool with this movie. They tried something, by golly! And the reveal didn’t wait for the last five minutes or anything, we got to see it multiple times and the reveal didn’t ruin the scare. The scares were okay. Not fantastic, just okay. Much like how I think about the overall movie.

2 out of 4.

One word, relatively new, much fear.

Unfriended. How could someone be so cruel? Don’t you know they’re human too? …I’m gonna watch it anyways.

Sure, one could look at the title of the movie and the plot and think, “Yep, just another shitty modern horror.”

But for some odd reason I found it drawing. I thought it could have been made for me. But then again, I enjoyed the movie Smiley, which was also about modern tech things and a killer. Unfriended is already such a cold term, I can’t wait to see how they make fun of it.

And if you hate the title, you have to admit that it is better than the original name for the movie: Cybernatural.

Who would have thought the new face of evil was previously a sign of laziness?

Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) killed herself. She was a pretty, relatively popular high school girl. But then she got super drunk one night at a party as a junior. Someone posted a video of her drunk, including the embarrassing after math and suggested she kill herself. Sure enough, she did it.

But that is old news. That is the past. That was a year ago today.

We should instead talk about sex. Because what is the point of skype if not helping take your long distance relationship to the next level? Or close distance relationship with over protective parents. Blaire Lilly (Shelley Hennig) and Mitch Roussel (Moses Jacob Storm) are teasing each other when they get forced into a giant Skype call with all of their friends. Fatass Ken (Jacob Wysocki), prep looking Adam (Will Peltz), and party girl Jess (Renee Olstead).

But hey, there is some glitchy other user in their chat. Some billie person. It can’t get kicked out, it stays when they restart the call, and it has no profile picture. Oh well, must be a glitch.

What is not a glitch is Laura randomly messaging a few people. Someone must have hacked her account and is trying to scare her friends. That’s not cool. Unless of course, it is a spirit doing all of this, and wanting to possess the group of friends into committing suicide. But that’d be awkward. Also there is Val (Courtney Halverson), as the random stuck up bitch other popular girl.

Sexting is so middle school.

Did I mention this entire movie takes place on Blaire’s computer screen? She has a mac of course, a nice laptop. Has the Spotify, the Skypes, the iMessage, the Facebooks, the ChatRoulette. She has it all. And the entire film, again, is through the screen. You might be thinking one of two things: Modern Family did it first. And that sounds terrible.

Technically, the Modern Family episode came out before this one, but this film was released a long time ago in film festivals. So who knows if Modern Family even knew that. As for the other fact, no, it is totally entertaining. Mostly thanks to the directors incredible attention to detail.

First of all, the movie is set in real time. The clock in the top right corner moves every minute, and by golly, it matches a real minute. The computer screen is incredibly realistic, as are Blaire’s typing speed, cursor movements, and literally just tabs open/search history. Everything. It feels realistic as fuck. Shit, there are even a couple hidden jokes I found in it.

At the same time, some of the attention to detail seems to be a bit lazy. For instance, previous messages randomly disappearing despite tabs never actually getting closed. There was one moment when Blaire had to share her screen in the Skype, which I guess is doable. Cool. But she never unshared it then did some awkward things after the fact, but it had closed by that point and that didn’t become a plot point for her being dumb. Long amounts of time with no one talking on Skype while Blaire does something else. Maybe she takes off her headphones during these moments, I don’t know. Things like that. The details are both infuriating at times and almost awe-inspiring. A lot of them they can just blame on computer ghost/hacker shit though, I guess.

Oh yeah, and this movie would have scared the poop out of me if I didn’t already poop four times that day. A huge part of it is the noise I would say. So many scares come from sudden noises. Incoming messages, Skype calls, wall posts, typing noises. All of it. Ahh. I never really want to hear a Skype call noise ever again, so I hope I can change it. I had to sit with my hands over my face so many times thanks to knowing that something fucked up was about to happen and I didn’t think my body could handle it.

Unfriended is new and modern, it has a unique enough twist, it is perfect at its 80something minute length, it is scary and tense, and it is overall a frightening time. Now excuse me while I burn the laptop that I wrote this review on.

3 out of 4.

Horror sequels are a hard beast to tackle. Horror spin-offs are another entity altogether. In fact, I literally can’t think of a single one.

After all, having a successful horror franchise is the goal of many horror films. They hope they are scary and unique enough to warrant coming back to. They might even take over completely unrelated projects and just take on the same name in order to live off the hype. But a spin-off? Really.

The Conjuring was a great movie. Most people would agree with that. Eventually we will get a sequel to that, but until then, we get franchise spin-offs based on things we see in The Conjuring. I guess. And honestly, an Annabelle movie talking about her origins before The Conjuring made sense. As long as it isn’t identical to Chucky, and as long as it is entertaining, then bring it on.

I hope they answer how any one could even want this ugly thing in their house.

Annabelle takes place a year before the events of The Conjuring. It is centered on John (Ward Horton) and Mia (Annabelle Wallis). Yes. The main female character is actually named Annabelle. The couple are expecting their first baby soon, and as a gift, John gave Mia the final piece of her doll collection. It cost a lot of money! And it looked creepy before getting all disfigured.

Unrelated to a doll, two members of a cult come by, murder their neighbors, then attempt to murder Mia and her unborn child! But the police show up and save the day, killing those darn cultists! The lady cultist bleeds on the doll, and apparently that is enough to invoke Satan, demons, and other terrifying things.

Needless to say, the doll starts doing some creepy stuff. But the baby is still born, so don’t worry about that! Just…What does this doll want? Hopefully not cuddles. With a new baby in the mix, I sincerely doubt there is time for cuddles.

Also featuring Alfre Woodard, Tony Amendola and Eric Ladin.

Let this be a lesson parents: Never get your child hooked on dolls. It only ends with Satan.

I think I am starting to realize why horror spin-offs don’t really happen or work. Based on all of the ones I have seen (all one), they don’t make a lot of sense in the plot department.

The could make a lot of sense, but that requires caring about the plot and the movie they came from. But based on the ending, there doesn’t seem to be a real reason for why Annabelle matters at all after this movie. Based on the mythos they created for the character and then explained in great detail throughout this whole movie, it should be over.

Now we have this movie and The Conjuring that both don’t do a good job of explaining why she still matters at all. And that is dumb.

Speaking of dumb, the ending in general of this movie was done. And the beginning and middle, but for different reasons.

I can’t believe they created a nonsensical and non-unique evil doll character. What a waste of time. I can’t believe we have to associate this with the awesome The Conjuring from now on.

1 out of 4.

1250.

Welcome to my 1250th review! This Milestone Review is actually a bit cooler than the last few. Something about a “250” is sexy. A quarter of a thousand. That means I am slightly closer to 1500!

Now I know what you are thinking. Freddy vs. Jason? That movie came out like, ten years ago? What in the actual fuck are you doing?

Well, my goal for a lot of these milestone reviews is to pick a specific sort of unique movie. A lot of the times they are well known movies that are critically panned and hated, which allows me to write to a specific audience and laugh at it with them. It also allows these “bad movies” to maybe get a fair shake, should they be great.

Unfortunately with my criteria, I feel like I basically got all the movies in my time frame. I mean, Twilight and all? After all the other movies, I kind of have to branch out more.

The reason I picked Freddy vs. Jason is because it was a pretty intense movie when it came out, putting together two horror icons who have been in pop culture for decades. And I never watched it! I only thought about it thanks to the review of the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. I realized this would be perfect for my next milestone, and I hope it combines the best elements of the two franchise with plenty of death and laughs.

I guess this scene falls under a plot element that both franchises tend to include in their repertoire.

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is a sad evil little nightmare. His power came from fear. He was getting back at the youth of a neighborhood that killed him, because he had it coming. Well, whatever the town did, they seem to have forgot about him. If they aren’t afraid, he has no power. If he has no power, he can’t invade their dreams. If he can’t invade their dreams, he is forgotten and will live an eternity alone.

So he finds Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger). Resurrects him, pretends to be his mother (Paula Shaw), and tells him to head to Elm Street for some revenge killing. If Jason does it right, they will think it is Freddy, and he will be back to kill again!

Especially her. They should make her their main goal and focus mostly on her. Definitely definitely her.

Hey look at that. Freddy’s plans work perfectly. Right after some teen sex, Gibb (Katharine Isabelle) is taking a nice shower, and her boytoy gets stabbed a few times and folded in half in one of those bed things. Man, fucked up! Since he died in a bed and in a weird way, this gets some of the older folks talkin’. They think somehow, despite all their prep, Freddy has come back and is again, going after their kids.

The kids don’t know that yet though. They have been sheltered and hidden from the horrible past of this area. They do know that somehow, some people are getting murdered. And you know what, it isn’t just in their dreams.

Sometimes a weirdo in a hockey mask shows up.

And Jason sure does know how to make an entrance.

Shit, one dude was even in a nightmare with Freddy who was too weak at the time. He woke up and escaped, but then was just straight up murdered by Jason. Everywhere seems to be terrifying.

Outside of the vague nightmares, they wouldn’t really know about Freddy if it wasn’t for Will (Jason Ritter) and his buddy Mark (Brendan Fletcher). They were at the local Psychiatric Hospital. Aka, they were being terrorized by Freddy and the town put them there to keep it away from the untainted youth! They even had a non-FDA approved miracle drug that would suppress dreams. Huh, how handy.

Either way, Will used to date Lori (Monica Keena), our main heroine pictured above. No bad blood between them outside of the fact that she had no idea what happened. He says he saw her dad (Tom Butler) kill her mom. Oh, that’s awkward.

With two supernatural entities, everyone agrees that is the most fucked up part of this.

Wait a minute. Everyone right now has to realize that Jason and Freddy share a universe. So some of these guys have heard about Jason before, and they know that this Camp ClearWater is a haunted area that people don’t go to. They know the stories.

So who is the biggest threat? Should they focus on finding a way to get their dreams to stop, or finding a way to make Jason leave first? They figure they want to get their sleep on, so they should probably go to the Psych Hospital and get that miracle drug so they can sleep with ease.

But even more importantly is that Freddy is really fucking pissed off. Jason on numerous occasions keeps killing, but he doesn’t want that anymore. Jason has killed people in their sleep, right before Freddy can do the job. That isn’t cool man. That is totes uncool.

Yeah man. Why can’t you be chill, man?

So, thanks to the help of young Deputy Scott Stubbs (Lochlyn Munro), they are able to break into the ward! Their team is young stoner Freeman (Kyle Labine), Lori, Will, Lori’s black best friend (Kelly Rowland), and a nerd!! (Chris Marquette).

Well, Freddy decides to possess one of the kids, because now seems like a good idea. He uses the stoner, because he can get him high first.

Stoner Freeman ends up getting rid of all the drugs. Not only that, but he also is able to tranquilize Jason who is still chasing the kids everywhere they go!

That’s right. Now Freddy can fight Jason in the Dream World and finally take him down.

I know, I can’t believe the two iconic characters actually get to fight either.

Well, given it is home turf for Freddy, the nightmare realm, he really starts to fuck Jason over good. So many torture devices to show him the business. But guess what? Jason seems invincible. Nothing is hurting him.

That is because Jason isn’t afraid. It isn’t until Freddy realizes he has one fear, water, that he knows what to do. He takes Jason back to the time when he was young and he drowned at the lake.

Meanwhile, back in the real world. The kids have a plan. They are continually tranquilizing Jason to make sure he doesn’t kill them and driving him back to the camp where he normally lurks. They also tranquilized Lori to go into their dream battle.

They figure if they can bring both of the entities to the camp, Jason has a better chance of beating Freddy. If he wins, then they might leave them alone because he is home. If he loses, well, they still have a Freddy issue, but at least Jason is done.

Lori’s job is to make sure Jason doesn’t die in the dream and to bring Freddy back to the real world with them. Yay more violence!

In this scene, Kelly Rowland calls Freddy a faggot. Not really funny, just awkward 2003 moments.

Needless to say, their plan only kind of works. Eventually Freddy is in the real world too, but more of them keep dying in the process. But at least Freddy and Jason are fighting again. And maybe, just maybe they can escape if one of them wins.

I bet you want to know who wins. Well, neither win of course. They both attack each other with each other’s weapons. But Jason does decapitate Freddy! Just. Freddy still winks by the end of the movie.

That lets us get more sequels that refuse to exist, including the very rumored Freddy vs Jason vs Ash movie that would be very sexy. I don’t care how old Bruce Campbell is.

Oh and Garry Chalk is in this movie as main police chief guy. I couldn’t find a good time to talk about him.

More fight scenes than you can shake a machete at.

For review 1250, I think I picked a really good film. 1300, 1350, 1400, and 1450 might suck, but this one is a decent one and a good one to break my yearly limit for.

I actually found Freddy vs Jason to be very entertaining. It took the extremely campy and scary moments from the Nightmare franchise and combined them decently with the senseless stabby violence of Jason.

I am clearly more of a Freddy fan of the two, but I think both of them were represented in positive lights for their respected franchises. Neither side of this fictional battle should feel slighted by what occurred in this cross over.

And they didn’t even skip out on the fight scenes. They made sure the two main battles between the two were unique, long, interesting, and true to characters. It wasn’t just 2 minutes tacked on to the end. No, we got a lot of it and the build up felt natural.

Well fucking done, guys. Well fucking done.

3 out of 4.

Welcome to the final day of Musical Week! Aww, sad, yes I know. Part of the reason I picked this week for a theme was because of the two musicals coming out, yes. The other reason is because I am on my honeymoon this week, and for the most part, musicals are set in worlds where people are happy and singing and dancing. Dancing is important. If there is no dancing, then you have Les Miserables and that is a sad musical.

But dancing can also be creepy. We learned that with the Thriller music video. Horror Musical isn’t a huge category. Stage Fright from this year attempted it, but it was also definitely a comedy for going for the happy musical + slasher movie elements. The only one I can think of that got really close was Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Oh well look at that. The Devil’s Carnival is done by the same people who brought us Repo! How quaint. I can’t believe how that segue came so naturally~.

In fact, a lot of the actors from Repo! are in this one as well. It is basically an unofficial and not at all related sequel to Repo!

Satan + Dancing = Horror musical.

The stories from The Devil’s Carnival are based upon Aesop’s fables. That isn’t subtle at all, because we have Lucifer (Terrance Zdunich) reading from the book to a kid. But at the start of the film, three people die. Ms. Merrywood (Briana Evigan) dies in a shootout with the police. John (Sean Patrick Flanery) has just lost his son and is about to slit his wrists. Tamara (Jessica Lowndes) was dealing with bad boys and got killed by an angry boyfriend.

And apparently they are all now in Hell!

The Ticket Keeper (Dayton Callie) runs this Hell/Carnival, where it uses demons and devils to teach those new residents their lessons. But you know, with circus themes and shit.

With such carnival employees such as The Painted Doll (Emilie Autumn), Wick (Alexa PenaVega), The Twin (Nivek Ogre), The Scorpion (Marc Senter), Hobo Clown (Ivan L. Moody), The Magician (Bill Moseley), and The Fool (Mighty Mike Murga), who wouldn’t have a good time?

This game is actually my favorite sort of foreplay.

The Devil’s Carnival is only an hour long, but it packs a lot of material and a lot of crazy shit into that hour. Anything more would definitely be pointless. The songs were both eerie and beautiful. There wasn’t a lot of time for talking either, as the story advanced through songs for the most part.

If I had one major complaint, it is that I thought we had repetitive songs. Not tunes or musical themes, but the songs themselves were basically saying the same thing a few times. I think twice this happened, where the plot/punishment was unfolding for the characters,through a song, then someone told the same story/fable in another song right after. It felt awkward. Like, stop talking about the Scorpion and the Frog. I don’t care that much.

Overall it was a really well put together story and the ending implied a lot more is to come. And there is! More importantly, it won’t just be a rehash of the first film with new people coming to Hell and new fables. No, they have grander plans in the underworld. The next movie, The Devil’s Carnival: Alleluia! It will be a full length production and should be coming out in sometime 2015.

I can wait, totally, a good while. Saying “I Can’t Wait” would be dishonest. But a part of me is pretty excited to eventually see where this story goes.

3 out of 4.