Category: Uncategorized

Halloween Ends
Directed by David Gordon Green

Spoiler Free: A baffling misfire, Halloween Ends can’t decide if it wants to bring the Halloween series in a new direction or pay tribute to its roots, and in the end, it does neither well. Full of breathtakingly bad dialogue and nonsensical characters, a good cast can’t redeem a lackluster ending to this trilogy.

In 1978, Halloween instantly changed the landscape of horror movies, spawning countless imitators and ripoffs, but none of them could match the brilliance of the story of Laurie Strode surviving the night that he came home. Tight writing, nerve-destroying cinematography, and iconic music are all remembered fondly, but it was the more subtle things that made Halloween stand out. The mystery, the intrigue, the unanswered questions about fate, the nature of evil, and the human response to it; have all birthed dozens upon dozens of fan theories and explanations for why exactly Michael Myers and Laurie Strode were what they were. I’m not familiar with all of these theories, some are good, some not so good, but I can say with certainty that all of them are better written than Halloween Ends.

Oh this is a bad trend, me not getting this done again until well into the new year. At least its before March this time so I guess it could have been worse, but I do apologize. I have been extremely busy but I’m planning some new reviews including the newly released Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and I’ll hopefully have that finished soon. Thank you for sticking with me! What were your favorite movies from last year?

Day 16

Hausu (1977)

Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi

Hausu is the immortal tale of a young woman, named Gorgeous, who takes her friends with her on a trip to visit her estranged Aunt in the countryside. While the girls are out on this trip, they encounter a number of strange situations as they learn that not everything about Gorgeous’ Aunt is as it appears. Those of you who have already seen this movie know that I am massively underselling what happens in this movie so let me make it clear: this is an intensely surreal film full of bizarre visuals, sound design, performances, and comedic interludes. I still think it has an understandable story structure, but nearly every scene includes something very very strange. Sometimes this is as innocent as having all the main characters have silly overly descriptive names: Prof is smart and reasonable, Mac is always eating, Kung Fu is good at Kung Fu, and this can give the movie a sort of fairy-tale quality at times. Other times there are flying heads and people dissolving into blood and pitched martial arts battles. If you can’t already tell, I love this movie.

What makes Hausu work for me is that it isn’t just nonsense for the sake of nonsense, the people who made the movie knew how narrative structure works and they knew how movies are supposed to behave, but took joy in turning every aspect of that on its head. What especially impressed me about the comedic sequences was how well they played into the horror sequences, something that a lot of other horror-comedies can’t seem to figure out. In Hausu, absurdity is funny AND scary at the same time, and when you feel both at once each feeling comes across much stronger, which I always prefer to movies where the horror and comedy feel like they’re locked in separate rooms, each waiting their turn to come out. However, whether or not you will enjoy this movie will have a lot to do with how you feel about surrealist cinema. If you don’t like absurd surrealist productions then you will not get anything out of this movie, except maybe a headache. If you do like really weird cinema then I would 100% recommend Hausu.

For those who are not aware, Juneteenth marks the day the last group of enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas were freed after the arrival of the Union Army. It’s an important day, should be a national holiday, but the point of the matter is that there is still a nationwide protest to combat systemic racism and white supremacy today. I’ll continue with reviews next week, but for right now if you can please make a donation to one of these great organizations!

If you’d like a movie recommendation for this weekend, I’d suggest Horror Noire, a history and analysis of black horror. It’s an informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking film that chronicles many important black horror films. It’s also currently free to watch on Shudder, with instructions below on how to do so. Thank you for reading and stay safe.

I have come to 2 conclusions after going through all the horror films that I watched this year. 1) This was a damn fine year for horror. 2) I need to watch waaaaaaay more current stuff. I might actually have to do *gasp* research on what good Indies are available! But that’s for the future. Here is my list of top 10 horror films that I personally saw in 2019. If your favorite isn’t on here, I probably didn’t see it. OR I did and am pretending I didn’t so as to avoid any awkwardness. Let’s get started!