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Monday, October 26, 2015

Thoughts on A Few Horror Movies

I watched four horror movies yesterday on Netflix. These are my thoughts:

Honeymoon: 2014 horror movie directed by Leigh Janiak, co-written by Phil Graziadei and Janiak, and starring Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway. It is about a newlywed couple having their honeymoon in a cabin in the woods, and the husband finds his wife sleepwalking naked in the woods one night, and afterwards, it seems as if she is a different person under the shell of his wife. I liked the slow burn of their happy newlywed life slowing turning into terror as the husband is suspicious and confused by his wife's strange behavior and mysterious marks on her body. Leslie and Treadaway were good and kept the story compelling, and even though I felt the reveal for her changes was pretty weak, I still liked the movie anyway.


Pontypool: 2008 Canadian horror movie directed by Bruce McDonald, written by Tony Burgess (adapted from his novel Ponty Changes Everything), and starring Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, and Georgina Reilly. It is about a few employees in a radio station who are trapped inside while a virus infects people and causes mass murders and suicides. It mostly centers on a shock jock DJ, a manager, and a station assistant becoming slowly aware of the chaos outside, and trying to understand the virus and protecting themselves. I think Canadian horror is really good, and there is this style that can either be really good horror comedy, or horror that is grounded in reality with likable characters. McHattie and Houle really excelled in this, and it was an interesting movie to watch.

Haunter: 2013 Canadian supernatural horror movie directed by Vincenzo Natali, written by Brian King, and starring Abigail Breslin and Stephen McHattie. Breslin plays the ghost of a teen girl who is trying to understand why she and her dead family are haunting their old house and reliving the day of their deaths over and over again, on a time loop of sorts. It reminded me of other movies (The Others, Groundhog Day), but was well-acted and had a good, suspenseful pace to it. It feels made more for a YA audience, but I still liked it anyway.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: 2014 Iranian-American horror romance movie written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, and starring Sheila Vand and Arash Marandi. The film can be described as an "art house vampire spaghetti western." It is about a young woman vampire who stalks the streets at night in her chador and preys on her victims. At home she listens to 80's post punk music and chills out. She has this penetrating stare that makes her really intimidating, especially when she stays quiet for an extended period of time before striking. The film is beautifully shot in black and white, is a cool mix of genres, and feels like a really badass art film.

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