New VOD Movie Review: The Night

The Night is an Iranian and American coproduction (most of the dialogue is in Farsi) that premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in January of 2020, and it was released on VOD on January 29 of this year.  Just about all the descriptions I've seen of this movie call it a psychological thriller, but there's way more to it than just that.  It definitely has a heavy psychological bent, but it's also a supernatural story.  Overall, I think the best way to describe this film is to call it a supernatural psychological thriller, something you don't see all that often.

It follows an Iranian couple with a young baby, and it starts out innocently enough at a dinner party.  Everybody seems to be having a good time, and after the party ends, the family drives home like they would any other night.  But this isn't any other night.  For some reason, their GPS bugs out on them, and after a few hours of driving around, they give up and decide to spend the night at a hotel.  Immediately after they arrive, they begin to experience some strange phenomena, and when you see it, you're not entirely sure what to make of it.  At first, most of what happens seems weird but still explicable by natural means, but then the movie starts leaning more heavily into tropes that are very typical of supernatural horror.  For example, the characters begin to hear strange noises, and they see some creepy kids running around the hotel.

Soon enough, the supernatural element becomes impossible to deny, and you realize that you're watching an intriguing mix between a stereotypical supernatural horror movie and a psychological thriller.  Like I said before, it's a combination you don't see too much, but it works really well here.  The film blends both subgenres pretty seamlessly, making for an eerily effective mystery that keeps you guessing the whole way through.

And that's the biggest strength of The Night.  In fact, it's just about the film's only strength.  The plot is almost non-existent (it's literally just about this family in the hotel), and the characters are just barely fleshed out enough to support the story, but it totally works.  The scares and the mystery are so good that you don't really notice the movie's shortcomings.

In particular, this film really shines because the supernatural force in the hotel isn't just trying to scare its victims.  More than anything else, it's messing with their heads, and that sets the movie apart from the rest of the supernatural horror pack.  This thing is trying to disorient the couple and strike at their deepest emotional vulnerabilities, so the film eschews elaborate, in-your-face scares and flashy monsters that come out and smack you over the head with how terrifying they are.

Instead, the creepy scenes in this one are much more subtle.  They're more about unsettling you and inducing a pervasive feeling of dread than they are about creating individual scare moments (although the film definitely has those too).  Each time something spooky happens, it helps to build the overall atmosphere of terror and confusion, and it all adds up to a mysterious and unnerving whole that's much more satisfying than a bunch of loosely connected jump scares.

All that being said, the movie does have one big flaw.  The last twenty minutes or so get really weird, and I thought it went a bit too far in that direction.  It almost feels like you're watching a completely different movie, so it starts to become disconnected from what came before.

That's pretty much the movie's only real weakness, so it's not enough to derail the entire thing.  On the whole, The Night is still a very effective and creepy supernatural thriller that keeps you guessing from start to finish.  It messes with both its characters' and its viewers' heads, creating an intriguing mashup that combines the best elements of the psychological and supernatural subgenres.  I'm very happy to report that this is the first good horror movie of 2021, so if you've been itching to finally see something new that won't leave you disappointed when the credits roll, I highly recommend checking this one out.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: Terrified

In the last few years, I've been getting into foreign horror a lot.  I still love my American movies, but films from other countries often give us new and exciting experiences that we don't normally get from Hollywood or from independent American filmmakers.  They frequently don't follow the same rules and tropes that most domestic movies are beholden to, and their different cultural settings sometimes make for unique storytelling opportunities.

One of the best examples of this is Terrified, an Argentine movie from 2017.  It's about a string of weird, interconnected supernatural phenomena that take place in a seemingly normal, suburban town in Buenos Aires.  The first half of the movie details some of these strange events, and in the second half, a group of paranormal investigators set up shop in some of the houses and try to make sense of it all.

That may sound a bit generic, but I promise you, this movie is anything but.  To begin, the monsters look like they come straight out of your nightmares, and director Demián Rugna knows how to milk them for all the terror they're worth.  He saturates the scary scenes with a great atmosphere, and when he builds up the tension right before a big reveal or a scare, he does it at just about the perfect pace.  From a pure horror perspective, this is one of the best movies I've seen in recent years.

On top of that, the film also keeps you on your toes by never telling you just what its monsters are.  The best you get is a vague, nonspecific theory from one of the paranormal investigators, but it doesn't really explain much of anything.  Because of that, you can't pigeonhole this movie into a single subgenre of horror.  One moment, it can seem like a ghost or demon movie, and then in the very next scene it can seem more like a zombie film.

And it doesn't just do that once.  Your understanding of these creatures changes a few times, and when it does, it sometimes feels like you've switched to a completely different movie.  This unpredictability makes the plot really interesting and keeps you invested in the story. You can't help but want to know more about what's going on, so your eyes stay glued to the screen.

What's more, the fact that you never know what's coming next also keeps you on the edge of your seat just about the entire time.  The next scare can come from anywhere and in any way, so you can never settle down and get comfortable with the movie.  In particular, once the paranormal researchers come onto the scene and begin their investigation in earnest, all bets are off.  You have no idea what they're going to encounter, so every time it looks like something even remotely scary might happen, the tension immediately ratchets up to ten.  Just about anything could be lurking around every corner and in every dark hole, so you just have no idea what's going to come at you from one moment to the next.  It's a wild ride, and once it starts, it doesn't let up until the credits roll.

So if you're looking for something different from your typical genre fare, I would definitely recommend checking out Terrified.  Not only is it really creepy, but it's also a prime example of why foreign horror is so great.  It tells a new and unique story that you don't normally get from American studios or filmmakers, and it cuts straight across subgenre lines, giving you a unique viewing experience that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else.  

Classic Movie Recommendation: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a 1988 horror comedy that's just as ridiculous as its name suggests.  It's about a group of aliens that come to earth to kidnap and eat people, and yes, these aliens are clowns.  Not only do they have the look, but their spaceship is also a big circus tent, and they encase people in cotton candy before taking them back there.

I'm not going to pretend that this film is a shining example of the fine art of cinema.  It's not.  It's just an hour and a half of dumb fun, so if the premise of this movie doesn't appeal to you, then you're almost certainly not going to like it.  But if it sounds like something you'd enjoy, then you need to watch it.  It's one of the greatest horror comedies of all time, and it's absolutely hilarious.  For example, it has great lines of dialogue like this one:

"It was a space ship. And there was these things, these killer clowns, and they shot popcorn at us! We barely got away!"

On top of that, the clowns themselves are pretty cool too.  The filmmakers managed to create a look for them that fits the movie's tone just about perfectly.  They appear deformed or mutated, so they're obviously inhuman bad guys, but they don't look downright evil like Pennywise or Art the Clown.  Instead, they have a humorously warped look that lets you know they're monsters, but in a funny way.

Just seeing these clowns walk around town looking for victims is a hoot, but the real treat is seeing what they do to the people they come across.  They use various circus stereotypes to charm their victims and get them to put their guard down, and then the clowns either kill them or capture them.  To take just a few examples, one of the clowns lures in an unknowing victim with a puppet show, and another one does something similar by making shadow puppets with his hands.

But the clowns aren't the only thing this movie gets right.  Great monsters are obviously a must, but if the characters were bad, then this film would've faded into obscurity like a million other horror comedies with similarly ridiculous premises.  Thankfully, though, this movie succeeds on that front as well.

For instance, there's a curmudgeonly old cop named Deputy Mooney who doesn't believe any of this is real.  He's absolutely convinced that the entire town is just playing an elaborate prank on him, and the movie plays his extreme skepticism as a running joke that gets funnier and funnier as the evidence for the clowns begins to pile up.  And then we have the Terenzi brothers, a pair of buffoons who drive an ice cream truck, and their shenanigans fit right in with the tone of the film.

Finally, we have the main characters, a high school couple named Mike and Debbie and a young cop named Dave.  They're the heart and soul of this story (at least inasmuch as a movie like this even has a heart and soul), so they're much more serious than the other characters.  They ground the film with some real emotional tension, so you find yourself actually caring what happens to them.

When we put this all together, we get a genuinely great horror comedy that's stood the test of time.  This movie combines likeable characters with hilarious monsters, so when the credits roll, you feel completely satisfied.  It has everything you could want out of a movie named Killer Klowns from Outer Space, so if you're a fan of horror comedies with hysterically ridiculous premises, you do not want to miss out on this one.

Classic Movie Recommendation: The Changeling

Despite what its name might suggest, The Changeling isn't actually about a changeling (a monster that kidnaps people and then pretends to be them), at least not literally.  It's a haunted house movie from 1980, and it's about a musician who moves to a new city after losing his wife and daughter in a car accident.  As you can probably guess, weird stuff starts to happen in his new house, and he eventually realizes that he's living with a ghost.

This is one of those classic movies that hardcore horror buffs usually know about, but for some reason it tends to fly under the radar for most casual fans.  It's an absolutely fantastic film, so it deserves to be seen by a lot more people.  This isn't just a fun eighties cheese fest like The Monster Squad or a guilty pleasure that many hardcore genre fans share.  No, this is a legitimately good movie.  In fact, Martin Scorsese named it as one of his eleven scariest movies of all-time, so you know it's a quality film.

So what makes it so good?  Why would one of the most celebrated directors of all time commend it so highly?  Well, there are a few reasons.  For one, the plot is really interesting.  I know that the description I gave in the intro paragraph makes it sound super generic, but there's actually a lot more to it than that.  This isn't a typical haunted house movie where the ghost is just a huge jerk.  No, he has a really compelling backstory, so there's an actual reason for the haunting.

I obviously don't want to spoil anything, so I'll simply say that it leads to an intriguing mystery about just what happened to him, and the main character has to figure it out step by step, almost like Rachel in The Ring.  This mystery is where the name The Changeling comes from, and when you see it, you'll totally get it.

On top of that, the acting is pretty good too.  In particular, the main character is played by George C. Scott, a former Oscar winner, and he does not disappoint.  He makes you believe that he's a lonely widower trying to start a new life after losing his family, and once the plot really gets going, his performance hooks you and reels you in.  He would've elevated the movie even if the story were mediocre, but the combination of an intriguing plot with his great performance keeps your eyes glued to the screen in a way that few other horror movies can.

And finally, we have the scares.  This movie is forty years old, so it's probably not going to give you nightmares, but it's still pretty effective.  Unlike way too many haunted house movies these days, it doesn't rely on jump scares or creepy ghosts to get the job done.  Instead, it's all about atmosphere, suspense, and the fact that what you don't see is often scarier than what you do, so it manages to convey a sense of terror and dread in a way that hasn't lost nearly as much of its potency as its age might suggest.

All in all, if you're a horror fan and you haven't seen The Changeling, then do yourself a favor and go watch it.  Now.  There's a reason why Martin Scorsese recommends this movie.  It's that good.  It features a great lead performance from George C. Scott, it has an intriguing plot that'll make you want to stick around and find out what happens next, and it has timeless scares that still work four decades later.  There's so much to like about this movie, so it comes with my highest recommendation.  You won't be disappointed.

New VOD Movie Review: Shadow in the Cloud

Shadow in the Cloud is an action-horror movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, and it was released to the general public on January 1, 2021 via VOD.  It takes place during World War 2, and it stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Maude Garrett, a woman who hops on a military plane at the last minute with orders to protect a top-secret package.  The crew is suspicious of both her and the package, so they force her to stay in a small, one-person compartment on the underside of the plane where she can only communicate with them through an intercom system.  Soon afterwards, she sees a gremlin crawling on one of the wings, and as you can probably guess, the creature makes things very difficult for everybody on board.

This movie is about 80 minutes long, and for the first hour or so, I was really liking it.  Since Maude is in a small compartment by herself, this first part is essentially a one-woman show, and Chloe Grace Moretz absolutely nails it.  She's the best part of the movie overall, and in this first hour, she carries it almost entirely by herself.  I say almost entirely because the crewmen did their part too.  Even though they're just voices on an intercom, they feel like real people.  None of them are particularly unique or memorable on their own, but they somehow come together to form a whole that's much better than just the sum of its parts.  What's more, the mystery of the package is pretty intriguing as well.  The movie really makes you want to know what's in there, and it had my mind racing with all the cool things I thought it could've been.

And then we have the gremlin.  The film introduces it at a good pace, initially giving you little glimpses of the monster and then letting you see it more and more as time goes on, and once you see it in all its glory, it's way different from the cute little creatures you remember from the 80s.  This is a grotesque, rat-like monster that looks like it can and will rip your face off the first chance it gets, and I really liked it.

But then the movie changes.  At about the one hour mark, it tells you what's in the package, and I found that revelation really underwhelming.  I obviously don't want to spoil it, so I'll simply say this: it feels like a lame attempt to give Maude some more emotional depth, and it just takes time away from the elements of the movie that actually work.  What's more, the film also becomes a lot more action-heavy at this point, and surprisingly, that just makes it worse.  The little bits and pieces of action we get during the first hour are really good, but in these last twenty minutes or so, the quality drops dramatically.

The biggest problem with the action in the third act is that most of it centers around a group of Japanese fighter planes that come out of nowhere, and the gremlin is pretty much relegated to a side role.  The creature just makes it more difficult for the characters to fend off these random attackers, so it feels like the filmmakers simply shoehorned it into a story that originally had no horror at all.  The first hour does a really good job of setting this monster up as the main threat, and it's a huge bummer to see the movie switch gears and completely botch the payoff.

All in all, I actually liked the majority of this movie.  Like I said, the first hour is really good, so the part I didn't like was only twenty minutes.  The problem is that it was the last twenty minutes, which is arguably the most important part.  Movies need to stick the landing, and if they don't, then they leave you with a bad taste in your mouth that can sometimes outweigh all the good they did up until then.  And that was the case with this movie.  I wish that the first hour could've outweighed the third act, but it didn't.  For me, those last twenty minutes just ruined all the good they did in the previous sixty, so I have to say that I wouldn't recommend Shadow in the Cloud.  Instead, you should just catch up on some 2020 films that you might've missed (like maybe a few of these) to pass the time before the first good movie of this new year comes out.

Top Ten Horror Movies of 2020

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my most anticipated horror movies of 2021, and now it's time to do my favorite horror movies of 2020.  While this year was kind of a bust for new theatrical releases, horror was actually able to thrive a bit.  Granted, we still had a lot of big movies pushed back to next year, but horror has an advantage over a lot of other genres in this regard: many of the best horror movies are small indie films that would've gone straight to streaming services or VOD even if theaters were open.  Because of that, we still got a lot of good new horror this year, so I didn't have to pad this list with mediocre releases that wouldn't have had a chance without the pandemic.  I really love all of these movies, so without further ado, here are my top ten horror films of 2020.

10) Scare Package

Scare Package is an anthology movie that came out on the horror streaming service Shudder back in June, and it's one of the best meta horrors I've ever seen.  Imagine if Randy from Scream was in The Cabin in the Woods, and you'll have a decent idea of what this film is like.  It lovingly and hilariously pokes fun at some typical genre tropes (especially the ones that don't make much sense) and some of the ways we fans often talk about horror, and it's an absolute delight to watch.  It's funny, it has heart, and it's made by people who love the genre just as much as we do.

9) Host

Host is another Shudder movie, and when this one came out back in July, it took the horror world by storm.  It's a found footage movie, but instead of using camera footage, it takes place over a zoom call.  It's about a group of friends who hold a virtual séance, and when one of them accidentally invites an evil presence into their call, all hell breaks loose.  That might sound generic and lame, but I promise you it's not.  This movie takes a super simple premise and turns it into cinematic gold, so you're going to be seeing this one on a lot of top ten lists this year.

8) Vampires vs. The Bronx

Vampires vs. The Bronx is a Netflix movie that came out back in October as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup, and it's about a trio of kids in the Bronx who have to fend off a group of vampires who've taken up residence in their neighborhood.  This movie has laughs, great characters, menacing vampires, and a great message.  It's pretty much the total package, so even though Netflix movies are known for being very hit or miss, this is definitely a big hit for them.

7) Sputnik

Sputnik is a Russian movie that actually wasn't on my radar until about a month ago.  I completely missed its release, but then I got a screener for it through one of the websites I write for.  And I'm super glad I did because this movie is fantastic.  It takes place in the 1980s, and it's about a Soviet cosmonaut who returns to earth with an alien monster living inside of him.  Going into this film, I was expecting a monster movie along the lines of Alien, but instead I got a Guillermo del Toro-esque drama with horror elements, and it completely works.  It's a slow burn that focuses more on the characters than the monster, and it exceeded all my expectations.

6) Color Out of Space

Color Out of Space originally premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but it was released to the general public in January of this year, so it still counts as a 2020 film.  It's based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Colour Out of Space," and it does a great job of capturing the essence of that story while also updating it and bringing it into the present day.  It's about a family that encounters an alien creature that's literally just a color, and it wreaks absolute havoc on their lives.  I know that sounds really weird and probably a bit ridiculous, but the movie actually pulls it off.  In good Lovecraftian fashion, this film taps into our fear of the unknown and reminds us just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, so if you never imagined that a color could be scary, this movie will prove you wrong.

5) Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters is a post-apocalyptic monster movie set seven years after the earth was taken over by giant, mutated versions of normal animals like bugs and lizards, forcing humanity to live in underground bunkers to stay alive.  It's about a young man who decides to leave his bunker one day and travel across the surface to go see his girlfriend, and along the way, he meets some really interesting people and fights some scary monsters.  This movie gets a lot right, but I can sum it all up by saying that it does the absolute most important thing that any monster movie needs to do: it strikes a perfect balance between great characters and really cool monsters, so in my book, it's the best creature feature of the year.

4) Impetigore

Impetigore is an Indonesian movie that came out in its home country in 2019, but it was released here in the states on Shudder in 2020.  It's a folk horror about a young woman who travels to her ancestral village to take possession of her family's house, and soon after she arrives, she realizes that the villagers have other, much more sinister plans for her.  This movie was written and directed by Joko Anwar, who also made another fantastic movie called Satan's Slaves, so I was really excited to see what else he could do.  And I was not disappointed.  Unlike way too many horror movies today, this one doesn't feel the need to throw jump scares at you every five seconds.  Instead, it's a very atmospheric film.  Even when nothing all that strange is going on, it's just dripping with creepiness, so it keeps you hooked from beginning to end.  On top of that, this movie also has an intriguing plot and characters that you root for, so it works on pretty much every level.

3) The Dark and the Wicked

The Dark and the Wicked is another movie that came out at a festival last year (Fantasia) but was released to the public this year.  It was written and directed by Bryan Bertino, the same guy who did The Strangers, and it has the same bleak, pessimistic tone that his first movie had.  In fact, you might even say that this film is basically just The Strangers transposed from home invasion to supernatural horror.  It's about a family that's beset by a demon, and much like the killers in The Strangers, the demon in this one just toys with them before finally finishing them off.  It's a really bleak portrayal of evil, and I have to admit that it got under my skin in a way that few films ever have.  In fact, I can count on one hand the movies that have affected me the way this one did, so I couldn't help but put it near the top of my list.

2) Relic

Relic is an Australian movie about a woman with dementia who goes missing for a few days.  Her daughter and granddaughter go to her house to look for her, and when weird things begin to happen, you start to think that this might be more than just a bad case of dementia.  Soon afterwards, the woman shows up out of the blue and refuses to talk about where she went, and their situation just gets scarier and scarier.  I absolutely adore this movie.  My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, so horror films that deal with dementia really resonate with me, and this is hands down the best of the bunch.  It does a great job of depicting what dementia is like for both its victims and their families, and it also shows us how we should treat people afflicted with this terrible disorder.  It's atmospheric, it's beautiful, and it has a great message, so in some other years, it probably would've taken the #1 spot on my list.

1) The Invisible Man

But this isn't any other year.  This is 2020, and my favorite movie of any genre this year is The Invisible Man.  It's a modern updating of the classic H. G. Wells novel (and its 1930s film adaptation), and I can't say enough good things about the job that writer/director Leigh Whannell did with it.  He took a very sci-fi concept and made you feel like it could actually happen, and he used it to unmask a very real and very pervasive evil in today's society: abusive relationships and the lack of empathy towards women who experience them.  I could go on and on about this movie, so I'm going to control myself and just leave you with this: Leigh Whannell's last movie, Upgrade, was really good, and it made me interested to see what he would do next.  But this movie immediately catapulted him into the upper echelon of horror directors working today, so now I'm not just interested to see his next project.  I absolutely can't wait to see it because I'm confident that it'll land a spot near the top of my list once again no matter what year it comes out.

New Theatrical Movie Review: Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter is an action-monster movie based on a video game series of the same name, and it came out on December 18.  It was written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, the same guy who did the Resident Evil movies, and it's about a group of soldiers who get sucked into another world filled with huge, vicious monsters.

Going into this film, I had heard that it was a dumb, fun monster movie, and I thought I would really like it.  Dumb, fun monster movies are right up my alley (for example, I loved Rampage from a few years ago), so I was very much looking forward to this one.  Unfortunately, it's a bit too dumb, and its faults really take away from the fun, so I came out of the theater pretty disappointed.

I had a few problems with this movie, but by far the biggest one was the monsters.  If you're going to make a dumb, fun monster movie, you have to have fun monsters, but this one didn't.  For about the first hour of the film (and it's only an hour and forty minutes long), pretty much the only creatures you see are these giant spider-like things, and while they're cool enough, they get boring rather quickly.  This kind of movie needs variety in its monsters (like Kong: Island or this year's underseen gem Love and Monsters), and an hour of giant spiders is the exact opposite of that.

To be fair, there is one creature that's not a spider, but it's not terribly interesting either.  It's basically just a generic burrowing monster à la Tremors or the sand worms from Beetlejuice.  It's not bad, but it doesn't add nearly enough variety to this first part of the film.

Then, in about the last forty minutes of the movie, you see some different monsters, but rather than make you excited to see something new, they just make you realize how derivative the film is.  We've seen giant spiders and burrowing monsters a million times before, and this second batch isn't any different.  Some of them look like dinosaurs (there's even a stampede scene that reminded me a lot of Jurassic Park), there's a dragon that looks like a knockoff of Smaug from the Hobbit trilogy, and there's another monster that looks like a cross between a dragon and a xenomorph.  Admittedly, a xenomorph-dragon sounds pretty cool, but in the context of this movie, it's just another derivative creature that doesn't add anything new or interesting to the genre.

That's all pretty bad, but to be honest, I might've been able to forgive it if the human characters were fun to watch.  Unfortunately, they weren't.  Almost all of the soldiers die in the first few minutes, and then the one survivor teams up with someone who's been there for much longer and who knows the ins and outs of that world.  Paul W. S. Anderson could've done some pretty interesting stuff with that setup, but he instead chose to make his characters paper thin.  They're not terrible; there's just nothing particularly likeable about them.  In fact, they're so generic that they're almost not even real characters.  They're just excuses to see more monsters, and given how bad the monsters are, that's not a good thing.

Last but not least, we have the final twenty or thirty minutes of the movie.  This last bit opens up the world a little and implies that there's a lot of mythology behind this place and these monsters, but the film holds it all back like a tall kid holding a candy bar above his head while a short kid tries in vain to reach it.  It's really frustrating, and it's made even worse by the final scene.  It ends kind of like the original Mortal Kombat, with the good guys getting ready to square off against another monster right before the credits roll, and it feels like the filmmakers purposely held off on explaining the mythology just to get us to come back for a sequel.  It felt like a big slap in the face, and it killed any last vestige of interest I may have had in a potential sequel.

So all in all, I would not recommend that you go see this movie.  It's just a mix of elements taken from other (and better) films and put together into a frustratingly unsatisfying story.  If you like dumb, fun monster movies, go watch something like Rampage, Pacific Rim, or just about any Godzilla movie.  They're all much better ways to spend your time than Monster Hunter.