singedsun

I come with another round of horror movies, and currently a little less overwhelmed by nausea and migraine pain things to ear drops and meds. I've been collecting other recommendations of good horror movies on Prime and skipping around a bit as I find I need a bit of variety in my horror so there's no like consistency to the type of movies I'm watching here. I'll try to keep my little reviews spoiler-free.

Here's links to my two other posts: One, Two

Since last time I've watched five more movies, and one play, the National Theater's version of Frankenstein with Johnny Lee Miller as the Creature. I did not get to it in time to see the version with Cumberbatch as the Creature role, but from everything I've read online he does much better in Frankenstein's role and OMG does JLM make for an EXCELLENT Creature. He was well worth watching for.

Okay, so the movies, in no particular order:

Hell House LLC
This wasn't on the original list, it was a movie recommendation I got a few times both online and from friends. This I believe is an Australian production about a group of friends led by one particular guy who buys an old haunted B&B to into a Haunted House. It's found footage/documentary style in the aftermath of what happened on the opening night of the Haunted House. So you're watching the tapes of the crew in the build up to the opening as they create the haunts and discover there's more to the house than meets the eye.

I really enjoyed this even though I'm not always into the found footage style kind of movies. The haunting of the crew is pretty great. If you're susceptible to jump scares there might be a few but overall I though this well done and delightfully creepy.

Starry Eyes
I will say this movie should come with some odd content warnings for people that might be important. So CW: self-harm & reference to a non-consensual sexual acts.

This might be one of the most interestingly unique and creative of the whole bunch I've watched so far. Starry Eyes is about an actress in L.A. who is offered a dream role, a gateway role to stardom. To do it she must transform herself. There's a kind of implicit understanding that the production company this role is for is part of something larger, some cult, and they're preparing her to join them. But to do that they're requiring her to cut the toxicity from her life. It's heavy. It's a lot. But, it's so different and I kind of liked what they were trying to do.

The Strangers: Prey at Night
A sequel-ish to the original movies, The Strangers, this movie stars Christina Hendricks as the mother to two teens that she and her husband are moving to some new location so her daughter can start at a boarding school. They stop for a night at a motel trailer park owned by her uncle. Someone knocks on the door, and the game begins.

If you haven't seen the original, I don't think you need to -- the game is the same, but the players are different. This is your typical slasher/final girl type movie, so if that's not your style, this won't be for you. However one of the amusing thing about this one is the music choices the Strangers pick for their kill attempts, this big 80s ballads. The pool scene is particularly amusing. This is just a good time all around for me, but I can be easily amused.

Demon
Another unusual movie. This is a Polish movie about a man moving from London to marry his Polish bride where she's inheriting her grandfather's house. The night before the wedding the groom finds something he things is a body outside the house he thinks is a skeleton and during the wedding the next day, things start to go weird.

There aren't a ton of Jewish dybbuk movies out there, but of the ones I've seen this is maybe the strangest of them. In a way that I did enjoy. It was creepy and haunting. Unfortunately I think the ending was a bit more abrupt than I would've liked, a little too unresolved than all the build up deserved. But if you know Polish or don't mind reading the captions, I think this one is worth watching.

Triangle
HEY LOOK A HEMSWORTH! This was another Australian production with poster art that really doesn't do this movie any service at all. Melissa George stars in this as the overworked, overwhelmed mother of an autistic boy who takes a single day off with a friend to go out on a yacht to meet some of his friends for the afternoon. One of his friends happens to be played by a young Liam Hemsworth. Anyway, an electrical storm takes out their boat and stops them in the middle of the ocean. The come across an ocean liner and board, hoping to find help and instead find a killer trying to take them out one at a time.

This movies is... I don't know what it is. It's better than the art and the description gives it credit for. There's a sci-fi element at play that I was pleasantly surprised for and wasn't expecting at all. I enjoyed it over all.

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This was a decently good batch of movies.
I did start and immediately stop one movie that's on my list called Blood & Lace. It's one of the older movies on the list about a murdered sex worker who leaves behind a daughter. All the men in the first ten minutes of the movie start talking about how attractive this teenage daughter is and when I heard the words "good breeding stock" I called it quits. Whatever else happens there isn't worth my time.

Has anyone else been followed by SEVERAL blank profile bot looking accounts recently? I've had like four of them in two days. It's very bizarre.

Anyway, I just finished watching the second Happy Death Day movie, Happy Death Day 2U. Which if I'm being honest, I had no interest in either movie (despite my love for horror movies, slasher types especially) until recently. Last week, YouTube recommended this video to me that was an analysis of the horror show from 2018, The Haunting of Hill House, which I loved. The video covered the whole of the show, all ten episodes and some of Mike Flanagan's film history and love of Steven King. At and hour and some, it was a pretty comprehensive review/analysis for the show. But in that, the reviewer, "ladyknightthebrave" mentioned that the Happy Death Day movies were some of her favorite horror movies. Even though at the beginning she talks very in depth about how much she has never been much of a horror fan.

Part of why I'd never really had an interest in the Happy Death Day movies is the weird baby mask they advertise with, and that the killer wears throughout the first movie. I have a pretty severe phobia about masks and mascots, so I tend to avoid them when I can. I do like slasher movies though, weird masks and all, I've gotten good at averting my gaze from faces. There's a reason the Freddy and Jason movies are my favorites though - with Freddy there's no mask and with Jason it's a not even a full hockey mask, which doesn't trigger the same thing to my brain. (I also can't do clowns or puppets/dolls... those movies I like ACTIVELY avoid everything about them. I won't even try them. Not even Annabelle even though it's part of The Conjuring series which I love.)

I'm doing my best to write this out and keep my thoughts spoiler free. At least not more than you could learn about the movie in the first few minutes.

Anyway, I started with the first Happy Death Day movie, which as very clear Scream vibes from the beginning (another favorite series of mine because it's so campy but well done). Then it hits some very good movie references of mine, that aren't horror related like Back to the Future and Groundhog Day. If you don't know the premise of the Happy Death Day movies, the protagonist of the movies, "Tree", lives the same day over and over again (her birthday) being killed each day by someone in a baby mask (which is the mascot mask for the University she's at). Tree dies multiple times and must figure out how to stop the loop, or at least the killer, so she can move on to the next day. It's a fun premise, a little horror (less than I'd expected since really Tree is the only one dying). Overall, a fun and a little campy college slasher movie with sci-fi vibes.

Then on to Happy Death Day 2U which starts the viewer with Ryan, the roommate of Tree's love interest from the first movie. He comes in on next day, after Tree has broken her loop and we immediately see him stuck in a new loop. Only within the first ten minutes or so of the movie we see something that happens turning this moving 100% back into Tree's story but now it's more sci-fi than horror. Ryan's been working with friends on something on campus that has caused the loop. There's a very big CW here for suicide, as Tree works to reset the time loops without being murdered on repeat. This was actually the easier of the two watches for me because it was less about a killer in a baby mask (though it was present) and more about how to solve the big sciencey bits of the time loop.

There are some major tropes at play here in these movies that do make them very enjoyable. They're Blumhouse productions, which usually means the women have a good deal of agency and general badassery about them. We get to see Tree angry and frustrated and clever and strong-willed. I really like her as a protagonist overall. She's really a great focal point for these, she's not perfect but we see sort of like in Groundhog Day that living the same day over and over gives her a real perspective on her life and where she needs to be better to some of the people in her life.

There's some very real Scream parallels with this series (duology? I don't know if they actually plan on making more, but I'd watch them if they did). Movie two gives us the shake-up we expect, not just with the cast but with the story, giving us similar story beats and leading us to the twist pretty quickly. I find this opportunity (as with Back the Future) to make a new story with the same characters in the same setting on the same day really fascinating. I'm really intrigued to know how part of the story would've ended if we'd kept going with one of the twists. But what they chose was definitely more complicated and interesting.

I want to do more research on how they filmed these two movies too. It's very difficult to think they must've waited very long before just immediately moving into filming the second movie. The cast is young, and you'd need consistency in clothes and location, you'd need to repeat scenes without making them look out of place. And I think they did a really amazing job at this -- at least for me on first viewing just two days apart from watching the first movie. I'm sure inconsistencies existed, but I only spotted one (I think?). So I'm really interested to know if they filmed them either in tandem or back-to-back in order to keep them so close to one another. What an interesting twist on the genre.

Has anyone else watched this movies? Liked them or not? I'm very interested in hearing other people's takes on them. Also, I hope that ladybravetheknight on YouTube does an essay on them at some point. Highly recommend her channel if you're into long form video essays about movies and television.

ETA: I tweeted at her about the last video and told her I watched the movies just on that recommendation and she said she's actually working on a video about those two movies now. SO! I am v pleased and will definitely watch that as soon as she uploads it. Sometimes the internet is great.