224 - Sinister

    A family moves into the house where most of a family was murdered, and the father investigates the crime for his true-crime novel.  Evil stuff starts to happen when he finds footage of the murders - and others.
    I showed this to Cathy, as it was one of the more interesting horror movies from the last several years.  It’s been awhile since I saw it, and this viewing did make things more interesting.
    The sound and music is really unusual.  While the found footage is playing, some very unsettling music plays.  It’s a little like a heartbeat, but less organic.  There are synth elements.  It’s strange that I didn’t remember this from the first time I watched the movie.  I kept wondering if the found footage sequences would have been more or less effective without the score.
    The story fits together better than I remembered.  There are a lot of red herrings during the first half, but I’m impressed with how deftly the script inserts the important pieces of information.
    I do have one main complaint, and it really seems like something the director would have addressed.  There are two points in the movie where they use a jump scare that involves the supernatural being’s head jumping in from the side of the frame along with a big stab on the score.  These moments are cheap, and they break the fourth wall, for some reason.  They actually hurt my respect for how well the movie is done otherwise.  It’s like some producer said “we need a big scare to go out on!  Do this!”
    Regardless, the movie was effective at scaring Cathy.

223 - Suspiria

    An American girl goes to a foreign dance academy.  People start dying, and strange stuff happens as she gradually investigates things.
    I’ve avoided a lot of the giallo movies.  I haven’t cared much for Argento in general.  Last year, I watched Tenebre, which I think I liked a little more than I expected.  I’ve also found that he directed the Masters of Horror episode Jenifer, which I liked quite a bit.
    Suspiria enjoys a very positive reputation, and a pretty influential status.  I think I can understand this sort of thing, since it does make an impression, but honestly, I find it exhausting and weak.
    The movie focuses on two specific aspects: color and sound.  The script, the acting, the effects… all of it is unremarkable.  The editing is interesting, but it’s remarkably difficult to follow.  The design of everything is tilted toward making interesting colors.  Tinted windows are exploited to throw bright colors on things.  Red is all over the place, then blue, then occasionally, a green is used.  This focus actually works against the believability of the movie.
    There’s a sequence where a girl is fleeing a killer.  She makes it through a small window, putting a room between her and her stalker.  She sees an open door on the other side of the room.  She drops down, falling onto a whole mess of barbed wire.  The room is lit well enough that the audience can see all of the wire clearly.  If we had seen from her perspective, and the wire was entirely in shadow, I could believe it.  As the scene plays out, I can’t help but wonder why she decided to jump into the wire.
    The sound is really strange.  Music appears and pounds loud - really loud - and then stops.  This happens several times.  I don’t mind the idea of this, since the music is tied to the editing, and there’s some kind of internal logic to it.  The problem is that the volume difference is so incredibly huge, it’s hard to feel anything but annoyed.
    I had heard something… when Star Wars was originally released in Italy, audiences loved Vader’s breathing.  As a result, the Italian mix pulled the breathing way up.  This is all I could think of.  These audiences would rather hear the music than the dialogue.
    The story itself is kind of minimal.  It isn’t written especially well.  There aren’t many surprises to be had.
    I don’t actually think this is a great movie.  But I do think some of the imagery and the coloring, and the framing of the shots are fairly influential.  I think I just wanted a stronger, more coherent story.

222 - Ishtar

    A pair of songwriters get a gig in Ishtar, where they get entangled in a political mess.
    Cathy got me the Blu-ray for Christmas.  We watched it together.
    After I watched this the first time, I liked it quite a bit.  The longer I thought about it, the more I liked it.  Dangerous Business has been in my head often, and I’ve been suggesting the movie to almost anyone I can.
    The second viewing was actually better than the first!  While I had really liked all of the music/songwriting sequences the first time through, I felt like the plot was almost an intrusion into that bliss.  This time through, the plot wasn’t bad at all.  It felt like there was more of a continuity from the song sequences into the plot ones, and it felt more like two people from another movie stumbling into a big-budget action movie.  The tone of the delivery and the photography changes.
    I was more aware of a variety of continuity gags.  Every time they’re on stage, they invariably kick a microphone at some point.  Dangerous Business is remixed into different instrumental versions for background music (as well as a piece of music used in the Mission: Impossible series, in a very pleasing easter egg).
    There’s one complaint that I have, and it’s hard to blame them for.  There are passages where most of the dialogue is whispered.  I wish the mixing were better for those scenes.  I think those play better in theaters though.

221 - Charade

    A woman is widowed.  She finds herself surrounded by con men, looking to find $250,000 that her former husband supposedly had.
    I’ve had this in my queue for a long time, since it looked vaguely Hitchcockian, and I’ve wanted to see more of Cary Grant.  I finally gave in and watched it.
    It’s okay.  I’m surprised that it has an 8 on IMDB, but it is fun, even if it’s a little weak.
    The story is mostly told from the perspective of the female lead.  We learn what she learns, and we don’t get any information that isn’t directly shared with her.  Most of the story is built on trying to reformulate the audience expectations.  First, Cary Grant is a good guy.  Then something reveals he’s a bad guy.  Then he offers an explanation, and he’s back to being a good guy.  This keeps on cycling through.  It doesn’t feel like it’s masterfully handled, but it may just be an issue of the time period.  Everything feels like it’s being spelled out too clearly to the audience.
    The biggest problem is that the story is tonally confused.  It plays out like a mystery, focusing on tension for some of the story.  Then there are these witty, flirty exchanges between the leads that play like a romantic comedy.  Things keep flopping around, and it never does either of these things especially well because of it.
    There are two main reveals near the end.  First, the location of the money.  Second, one person isn’t who they seemed.  The location of the money is something they’re all focused on, but it never seemed to be the important question.  I certainly didn’t care.  Even the female lead doesn’t seem too concerned about it.  Come to think of it, she didn’t seem too concerned about her husband’s death either.  The second reveal is something that I saw coming.  Even from the beginning, the setup seemed fishy.  It makes the female lead come across like she’s not especially bright.

    Yet, perhaps because of the strange tonal shifts, this remains more watchable than I expected.  Some familiar faces are nice to see - Matthau, Coburn, Ned Glass.  Still, could use some trimming, and possibly a bit of restructuring to make the developments happen in the right spots.

220 - We Are the Best!

    Three young girls in 1982 Sweden form a punk band.
    This had a solid five-star rating on Netflix.  I decided to overcome my lack of interest in punk music to give it a try.
    It’s good.  I feel like there are aspects of it that I don’t quite identify with, since I’ve never been to Sweden, I’m not a girl, and I’ve never identified with the punk mindset.  Outside of these issues, there’s something very charming about this.  Their band is almost incidental.  It seems to give the characters something to do, but most of the story is just the three of them having fun, arguing, and indulging in their friendship.  And that’s where the movie feels best.  The three girls have interesting relationships, they have distinct personalities, and the interplay is simultaneously unpredictable and completely normal.
    The ending comes with their first public performance, and it’s strange.  It doesn’t feel like much of an ending, but at least it seems like it solidifies the point made about their friendship.
    What I found most likable was Hedvig, who knows her instrument well, but seems to like the fun of playing punk music.  But it was her role as a mediator that I liked.  She doesn’t have as many lines, and she seems the least comfortable with stretching her boundaries to accommodate her friends, but her behavior is still something I identify with.
    Still, I don’t really understand the punk mindset.  That isn’t to say that the adults in this come across as good people, or even reasonable.  They seem shortsighted, probably about just as shortsighted as the girls do.  But it reinforces a few stereotypes I have about punk music, notably that it involves a bunch of musicians copying each other and repeating ideas without actually believing in anything in particular.

219 - The Wolf of Wall Street

    The rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a stock trader who was convicted in 2003 of securities fraud and money laundering.
    I’ve been reluctant to watch Scorsese movies for awhile now.  I liked Goodfellas during high school, but eventually I grew out of it.  I realized that I find many of his movies kind of indulgent.  I think I like my stories a little more compact, tightly wound.  (Although Cathy didn’t care for Shutter Island, I remember liking it, and I’ve intended to revisit that one soon.)
    This movie is hard to avoid comparing to Goodfellas.  It’s long, at three solid hours.  It’s a similar rise and fall structure.  It ends with the person being convicted, ratting out his accomplices, and pining for the life he once led.
    There’s one key difference.  In Goodfellas, Henry Hill’s life is in a pretty constant decline.  He peaks pretty early on, but the drugs filter into everything, he gets less likable, and more and more people have to be killed off.  It gets harder to feel like it was a life worth living.  Here… I don’t get a sense of that.  It’s a party time from the beginning until about 15 minutes from the end.  Even the sequences that should have been terribly bleak feel like they’re being played for laughs.  He insists on his yacht being driven into a storm?  The scene becomes a joke as he sends his buddy down below to get some drugs.  Even after the ship capsizes, there’s a little dance party afterward.  What’s the message?  It doesn’t really matter.  He’s got enough money that it doesn’t matter at all.
    All of the negative consequences of Belfort’s behavior are personal problems.  Divorce, jail time… everything is softened because of his wealth.
    As I watched this, I thought of all of the people from my class that went on to work in finance.  Some of them were decent people.  Some of them were the most amoral people I knew.  I can imagine this movie captivating, especially in the time leading up to high school.  Without a strong moral core, I feel like this movie is missing something important.

    I read a handful of reviews on IMDB, and it reminded me of a few things.  The movie follows the general layout of a normal story, but it’s padded out to an excess.  There are loads of scenes that don’t really advance the story, or do it in the longest way possible.  Then there are a few other sequences that gloss over substantial events.
    Even though I can’t say that this is actually a good movie, it’s an entertaining watch.  Performances are fun, direction is usually enjoyable, and the quick pacing gives it a sheen of humor.  But at the core, I can’t say that this is good.  I can’t recommend it to anyone.

218 - Harold And Kumar Go to White Castle

    Stoner buddies Harold and Kumar decide that they want to make a trek out to White Castle to get some burgers.  Their trip turns into a night of (mis)adventure.
    I saw this a long time ago, probably 2005 or so.  I remember being pleasantly surprised.  There was mention of Neil Patrick Harris yesterday, and I remembered him being a highlight of this movie, so I decided to watch it again.
    I think I like it more than I did back then.  I’m seeing the unrated version now, which just means a bit more nudity, some of which adds to the surreal qualities of the movie.  I’ll get the one scene I really don’t care for, and that’s the toilet scene.  It’s not terrible, and it might play better for some age groups, but it seems out of place at that point in the story.
    The things that I like are much more unusual things.  Playing with the audience perception of racial stereotypes.  Putting an Asian guy as a romantic lead.  Even the appearances of some of the guest stars are about subverting the audience expectations of them.  Neil Patrick Harris is a strange, messed up, horny guy.  Christopher Meloni is cast wearing a bunch of weird deformities on his head.
    None of the white male characters are positive or honorable.  This doesn’t bug me.  It’s actually pretty refreshing.
    It’s also remarkable how the movie takes a premise that revolves so centrally around White Castle, and manages to prevent the movie from feeling like an ad for the chain.  It never says anything bad about their food, and the good material is glowing.  But it feels completely real.  These cravings happen.  I remember one day in college where a bunch of us started thinking about how great it would be to get Subway.
    I also like how well the movie ramps up the craziness.  It reaches a peak a little early, but it seemed like it didn’t make logistical sense to arrange it any different way.

217 - Troop Beverly Hills

    A stereotypical materialistic mother in Beverly Hills goes through a divorce, and decides to run her daughter’s Wilderness Girl troop.
    A podcast I listen to has mentioned this movie a fair amount.  One of the hosts of the show grew up watching a VHS copy of it.  I didn’t have any strong expectations of it.
    It’s not bad… but it’s not that good either.  There are a few good gags, but much of the humor feels weak and predictable.  I can’t blame this on having a cast that is largely children, either, since Shelly Long is the main character.  In fact, I didn’t feel like the girls were developed all that much.  Most of them were interchangeable.
    I realized that this was the equivalent of The Mighty Ducks to another person.  It’s a slobs-vs-snobs story (although cleverly inverted this time) that has lots of kids having fun and acting cool.  There are a few differences though, in that Ducks had the adult storyline, but shifted it far into the background, and even then, tethered the adult relationship to an adult/child relationship.  In this, the adult storyline is pushed further into the foreground, and it was hard to feel invested in the children.
    Most of the humor is a one-note kind of thing.  I don’t know what I think of that, since stuff like The Brady Bunch Movie is also a one-note story… but it’s done well.  I think the humor of this may have just been wasted on me.  I understood it was intended to be funny, but I simply didn’t care.
    This didn’t prevent me from enjoying the movie.  It gets a little more fun as the story builds, even if it’s a formulaic approach.
    If I saw this when I was younger, there’s a good chance I would have liked it.  If I were a young girl, I almost definitely would like it.
    The weirdest thing is the occasional use of the word ‘shit.’  Doesn’t seem like it fits with the tone of the movie.

216 - Oculus

    A lady and her brother attempt to understand and defeat a mysterious mirror that was involved in the deaths of their parents 11 years prior.
    This started off pretty poorly, playing like any number of haunted house type stories, but it gradually ramps up into something a little more interesting.
    The story focuses on two main characters, playing off of their parents.  The twist to the casting is that the story unfolds both in the present and the past, so two of the characters are played by four actors.  There’s a lot of confusion about when events happen, and the story jumps back and forth in time, and occasionally overlaps.  This is combined with a sense of confusion about what is real.
    I liked one sequence, when a girl starts to eat an apple.  Then she realizes that it’s actually a lightbulb she’s bitten into and is chewing on.  Then she realizes that it’s actually an apple.  The tricks on the viewer are endless, and it actually gets a little frustrating.  You never feel like it’s clear what the viewer can believe is real.  This is intentional, and it’s interesting to get engaged with a movie in this way.
    I don’t know how I feel about the ending.  Normally I’m not too picky about the endings of horror movies, but it didn’t seem to be what I expected.  I think I would have preferred a bittersweet ending, with the mirror breaking and the sacrifice, but instead…
    I wonder if this is an effort to leave the story open for a sequel.  I don’t think it needed it.

215 - Sharknado 2: The Second One

    A second sharknado forms, hitting New York.  The hero of the first movie returns to defuse the situation.
    I haven’t seen the first one.  I intended to, but I couldn’t do it.  I heard a review of the second one, and it was resoundingly positive.  They liked it more than the first.
    It’s hard to write anything about this movie.  It’s absurd, but it doesn’t try to be anything that it doesn’t tell you upfront.  The writing is silly and the story is ridiculous.  But what would be expected?
    There are cameos all over the place, and that’s kind of enjoyable.  Some of the set pieces are kind of neat.
    There’s only one way to accurately measure how good a movie of this type is.  How well did it keep me engaged?  On that kind of scale, I’d say it was probably about a 6 or a 7.  Whenever the story tried to incorporate human elements, I just didn’t care that much.

214 - The 400 Blows

    A young French boy deals with a difficult life at home and at school, leading to being held in a detention facility.
    This is one of those classic movies that I’ve just never brought myself to watch.  It’s one of the Criterion titles that constantly shows up.  I think it’s never been out of print in their collection.  Plus, it’s Truffaut’s first feature.
    It’s hard to tell how much of my interpretation is an issue of cultural and period differences.  Most of the behavior seems to be dated, both in the parenting and school settings.  The behavior of the kid is a little bad, but doesn’t seem all that terrible.  He’s not malicious, and he just seems to want to avoid the unpleasantness of the people around him.
    I didn’t think much of the photography until later in the movie.  Gradually, I came to really like the very long shots that he likes using around the city.  These are well-lit, and it’s easy to see exactly what we’re supposed to focus on.  Several of these are done from a high angle, and that really showcases some excellent planning and blocking.
    It’s hard to say that there’s much of a plot.  It’s mostly an exploration of the character and the circumstances he deals with, but there’s also something fascinating about the way that we identify with him.  Identifying with him allows us to feel the sense of imprisonment that he feels.
    There’s one problem that I can see, and it’s that I don’t see the influence this has had.  That isn’t quite true: I see that the school and child behavior in Cinema Paradiso are similar, but that movie is much more of an idealized fantasy… sort of.

213 - Children of the Corn

    A bickering couple drives through the middle of nowhere, encountering a town in which religious fanatic children have taken over and killed all adults.
    This is the 2009 made-for-tv remake.  It’s more faithful to the original story, and proportionally, a much larger budget.  I actually checked this out.  The 1984 version had a budget of $800,000.  In 2009 dollars, that’s equivalent to about 1.65M.  The 2009 version had a budget of about 2M.
    I guess this is to say that the quality of a production has little to do with the budget.  This movie was written and directed by the same guy.  In the interest of directly adapting the story, yes, he did that well.  In the interest of making a good movie, he failed.
    This is one of the first movies I’ve seen where I felt like the performances were the biggest problem.  Normally, when there’s a poor performance, it’s limited to a specific person, or a few people.  With this, there’s one actor that does a decent job, one that does a passable job, and everyone else is terrible.  And this is really puzzling to me, because the female lead is played by Kandyse McClure, who I’ve seen in Battlestar Galactica, and she’s good.  She does a very good job in that show.  I don’t doubt her abilities.  But her performance here is one of the most grating I’ve ever seen.  When she disappears about halfway through the movie, I found it easier to relax and enjoy the movie.
    The children are well-dressed, clean, and healthy.  This is in stark contrast to the town, which is dilapidated and run-down.  It’s actually one of the highlights of the movie - the town looks wonderfully abandoned.  While I have no issues with having different builds for the kids, I do take issue with the largely overweight ones.  It seems like their diet would result it pretty substantial weight loss.
    The script is awkward, and no one talks like a real person would.  When it comes to the kids, this is expected, but the arguments between the couple seem incredibly strained.
    There’s the dark ending, but I couldn’t care less.  None of the characters were likable, so it doesn’t seem to matter if they live or die.
    Effective religious zealotry is a real lynchpin to this story, and the kid playing Issac is so poor… and the kids playing the followers seem so disinterested that it’s hard to believe any of this.
    The one main strong point: it was actually pleasing to see the male lead being willing to kill the kids.  Especially for a made-for-TV movie.

212 - Zombeavers

    A bunch of college kids go on a vacation, where they run afoul of a bunch of mutated beavers.
    This movie is exactly what it should be.

    Certain scenes were done in an improv style, which gives a sense of liveliness to things.  The script is crude, but in addition to being crude, it’s unpredictable.  Jokes often fall on a continuum of how obvious a punchline is.  There are usually several perfectly acceptable punchlines to any given setup.  This script avoids those obvious lines, in favor of peculiar lines that I really didn’t see coming.
    I’m pleased that the filmmakers made appropriate judgement calls about where the money they had should go.  The photography is clear and understandable.  The sound is clear and understandable.  The effects are cheap; but not always.  A decision was made to make the mutated beavers mostly hand puppets and practical effects.  There are only a few computer-generated shots that I could identify, and they’re typically done for comedic effect.  There’s a really hilarious shot where they made the actors a different layer from the shot of the room, and the result is that they don’t move quite the right way… the look like they’re a bit smaller than they should be.

    Despite the campy weaknesses, at the core, there’s a real love for some normal zombie movies.  Return of the Living Dead seems to be an obvious influence because of the canister that creates the problem.  Later in the movie, there’s something about boarding up the doors and windows that feels a lot like the original Night of the Living Dead.
    There are two touches that I especially loved.  First, during the end credits, there’s a great theme song for the movie, and second, there’s a post-credits scene that implies that the mutation is spreading to bee, which will obviously lead to Zombees.
    One thing that I did learn during this was that I find tattoos really distracting.  Especially when they’re text.

211 - Omen III: The Final Conflict

    In his early 30s, Damien plans to kill off the second coming of Jesus shortly after he’s born.
    I have to say that this one at least has a stronger plot than the second one.  And it’s nice to see Sam Neill starring, since he always gives a good performance.  There are still problems, but it’s got some more interesting sequences, and I’m pleased to say that there was at least one surprise that it held for me.
    In order, one of the weirdest things is that Damien’s assistant knows about who he is, and intends to help him.  This makes sense, but the reveal for it seems so strange.  During a normal meeting, Damien pulls out an excised book of the Bible and quotes a passage to him.  I don’t know how the idea would be communicated earlier.  Maybe they’d lean in and whisper “hail Satan” or something.
    The core of the plot gives Damien a goal, which is a real improvement over the other entries.  His goal is to have any male child born during a specific morning killed.  He’s got a group of followers willing to execute his plans, too.  For a sequence that focuses on killing children, this is handled pretty well.  In retrospect, now I’m wondering how he gathered that many followers, and how he communicates to them.
    It’s also interesting that Damien manages to keep his hands pretty clean through most of the story, even as he tells his followers to kill children.  Only near the end does he start to get a little rougher, and directly kills someone.  This, combined with the way that the religious opposition is painted in black and white, makes Damien into a strangely likable villain.
    One other thing that makes this a distinct movie: it’s the first time that one of the Omen movies has ended with evil being thwarted.  Strangely, in this movie, that’s kind of a disappointment.

    The one scene that surprised me?  When the mother turns back and sees the burnt corpse of her baby.  Not what I expected.

210 - Damien: Omen II

    Young Damien learns that he’s the antichrist and attends a military academy as people looking into him wind up dying.
    My favorite surprise was seeing Lance Henriksen in this.  He’s always a pleasure to see.
    I wasn’t especially impressed with the first Omen movie… or the remake, which I saw in theaters.  But I wasn’t looking for anything that I’d have strong feelings about.  I’m really feeling kind of down, so I didn’t want anything too serious, or too funny.  Somehow, this was actually about the right level for my mood.
    There are some big problems with this movie, but they don’t become apparent until later on.  There aren’t any really great sequences, like the public suicide in the first movie.  Instead, we get a series of short set pieces that involve peculiar deaths.  A lady has a heart attack after a crow sits at the end of her bed.  A car dies, and a lady gets out, and is attacked by a crow, blinding her, leading to her being hit by a truck.  A doctor gets in an elevator, plummets, then gets cut in half by a wire.  These scenes hold no surprises.  The opening kill sequence is actually pretty well done, involving a pair of people being buried alive as rocks and sand fill in an underground passage.
    The story is really minimal.  Damien doesn’t actually do that much.  He’s a passive character, and doesn’t seem malicious.  I don’t know what I think of this.  It changes the primary antagonist to being something vague - “the forces of evil.”
    I can’t really point to much of a story.  Every person that discovers or suspects something about Damien dies quickly, so there’s no tension built up.  All of it just leads up to his father learning, believing in it, then making the decision that Damien should die.  This part of the story happens in the last 15-20 minutes.  When he comes around, it’s not believable.  He just spent the rest of the running time denying the possibility, then he was persuaded because of some ancient artwork that sort of looks like it could be Damien?
    There’s also one death scene that’s especially funny, because it relied on the victim not pushing himself out of the way.  Somehow, he gets stuck on the front connector for a train car, and just stays there.  It seemed like it required more effort to stay on it than to get off.
    The more interesting approach would have been to focus on Damien’s time in the military academy.  There’s very little time spent there, and it doesn’t come across like this was especially important.  Instead of crafting his own identity, Damien is told who he is.  Not an interesting way to handle it.
    There’s another nice thing about the movie though.  They tone down the music cues that made the first one hilarious to watch.

209 - The Uninvited

    A man and his sister buy a house on a cliff by the sea.  It turns out to be haunted.  With the help of the prior owner’s daughter, they unravel the mystery behind the ghost.
    I saw this listed as one of the few Criterion horror releases.  I hadn’t heard of it, but it must be worthwhile…
    It’s from 1944.  This means that I have a hard time telling if my expectations are reasonable or not.  It’s dated.  The conventions regarding the handling of supernatural stories hadn’t been fleshed out.  One of the things that the wiki article mentions is that it was the first Hollywood film to play a haunting as a supernatural event, rather than a comedic one.  This is implied by the score, which is remarkably upbeat and lighthearted for most of the movie.
    There are other things… like the premise involving a man and his sister buying a house together.  The man being interested in the daughter of the seller is a little odd, because the ages seem very different.  Later, it’s announced that the daughter is 20, so I suppose that’s alright.  I thought she was supposed to be somewhere between 16-18, but that may have been because of how the grandfather was treating her.
    I can see the influence this movie had, particularly on movies like The Innocents and The Haunting.  The story unfolds in a similar way to most of the other haunted house movies I’ve seen.  Even the trope about animals being aware of ghosts.
    There are some strong points here.  The house, the location, is great.  The layout of the house is great, and the main haunted room is really neat.  The script is fun, if a little slow by modern standards.  The effects work is really good for the time period.
    It’s interesting, at least from a cinematic historical perspective.  I can’t imagine watching it again.  I really wish Criterion would do a nice treatment for The Haunting though.

    Also notable is the fact that the piece Stella By Starlight first appeared in this film.

208 - Neon Maniacs

    A variety of creatures from under a bridge come out at night and kill teens.
    For a cheap 80’s horror movie, this is at least unique.  It’s strange, it’s low-budget, but it still gives the audience what it expects.
    The creatures are strange, and they don’t exactly stand up to scrutiny.  Why is one an army guy?  Why is there a samurai one?  Even weirder, why are they destroyed by water?  Wouldn’t the process of killing humans put them at risk?
    There are great 80’s cliches sprinkled throughout.  Ridiculous clothes and hairstyles, fantastically silly credits music, a battle of the bands that uses some great terrible 80’s pop.  This keeps things more entertaining than they would be otherwise.
    The script is weak, but it’s kind of funny.  The script conveniently removes the female lead’s parents by having them on vacation.  Their vacation doesn’t accomplish anything else.  After witnessing the death of several of her friends, the female lead gives a statement to the police… and nothing happens.  She’s pestered by a few people about their missing siblings/children, but she doesn’t seem that troubled by these events.  In fact, no one seems to be especially concerned.  The police give a half-hearted investigation, but there doesn’t seem to be any urgency.
    When the creatures show up and attack the big battle of the bands, one of them pulls out a machine gun and sprays bullets into the crowd of teens.  The teens run.  No one seems to be hurt.
    What are these creatures?  What do they want?  Why are they interested in killing?  Motivation is irrelevant.  They just kill because they do.

207 - The Babadook

    A widowed lady struggles with raising her son, and has to fight being possessed by a sinister spirit.
    The AV Club gave this a very good review, and it’s rare to see a horror movie get substantial critical praise.
    I’m impressed.  It’s very well-made.  The direction is clever, efficient, and evocative.  The script and performances are great, although it is an uncomfortable story.
    There’s one thing that usually drags horror movies down, and that’s predictability.  A twist is able to hold interest, but there are normally a set of rules that most movies are governed by; children in peril is usually a bad idea.  Certain acts take place off-camera.  Usually, it’s a matter of fulfilling the expectations created by the script.  Good movies usually are able to subvert some of these expectations.
    This is why there’s an unusual sequence, probably about halfway through, when the remainder of the story is spelled out for us.  It explicitly creates a new set of expectations, and messes with the audience by starting to fulfill those expectations, then derails them.  This is really smart.  It’s very effective, too.
    There’s an uncomfortable feel that dominates a lot of the first half, and it’s because we are exposed to erratic child behavior.  I know I don’t want kids, and the strangeness of this child’s behavior is a good explanation.  He seems pretty bright sometimes, and then his behavior switches drastically.  It does make us empathize with his mother.
    This is another thing - the movie does a great job of capturing being tired, and barely being able to hold on.
    I suppose my only criticism is that I don’t feel like I fully understand the ending.  I don’t think I understand the nature of the creature, what it wants, or why it remains.  I don’t know if I should be wondering about it, either.