Today’s movie is Death of Me, a psychological/supernatural horror movie starring Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth (brother of Chris and Liam). The movie was released in October of 2020, and it was recently added to Netflix which is where I watched it. After watching The King of Fighters recently I’ve been on the lookout for more Maggie Q movies that I haven’t seen, so this was an easy choice for my movie of the day.
Death of Me is about a couple, Christine (Maggie Q) and Neil (Luke Hemsworth), who are vacationing in a small village off the coast of Thailand. Christine and Neil wake up on what is supposed to be their final day on the island with no memory of the previous night and with their rental room in shambles. They don’t have much time to think about what happened as they scramble to catch a ferry to the mainland so they can head home, but when they both discover that their passports are missing, they begin to suspect something is seriously wrong. Christine and Neil then begin to try to piece together the previous night, only to uncover a dark mystery that begins with the couple finding a video on Neil’s phone of him apparently killing Christine.
From there the movie progresses in a Wicker-Man-esque way with the locals becoming more sinister as they prepare for a local festival. Christine’s health begins to deteriorate and she sees flashes of frightening images, but are the things she’s experiencing real, or are they just hallucinations? Can she even trust Neil after what she saw on the video? It all builds up to a mostly satisfying climax with more than a little predictability.
For me, the best part of Death of Me is Maggie Q’s performance. The mystery of the movie feels familiar and is often pretty easy to predict, but Maggie Q helps sell every scene with her mixture of fear, annoyance, and anger. There is one scene late in the movie that I won’t spoil, but it’s a great and surprising moment of Christine having just about enough of the way everyone has been treating her, and she finally decides to do something about it. I’m sure you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it.
Overall though, I thought Death of Me was just okay. It’s not particularly scary like the cover artwork may lead you to believe, and the mystery doesn’t feel super mysterious to me. The movie feels like it emulates similar plots including the aforementioned Wicker Man (which is actually mentioned in the movie by Neil), but I am glad I kept watching until the end. I was feeling a lot of frustration just like Christine was (well, maybe not just like Christine, but I was getting annoyed with how people were treating her), and seeing Christine lash out was pretty satisfying. I’d say give this a watch is you really enjoy psychological thrillers, but maybe watch the trailer first to get a feel for the tone of the movie.
I recently discovered that the last video rental store in my area finally closed for good, and that made me a little sad. Yes, there are quicker and easier ways to rent movies these days than by going into an actual store and looking at actual boxes with actual discs inside, but I actually really enjoy doing that. I’m sure my love of video stores is based in large part on nostalgia, and I’m fine with that. I get a sense of comfort and familiarity whenever I’m walking down aisles and aisles of video boxes. But for now, it seems that’s all over. And sure, I hadn’t been to my local video store in nearly a year thanks to the pandemic, and I’m sure the pandemic was the final blow that shut the store’s doors, but still. I already miss it. So without a video store to go to, I decided to browse a local Redbox for my daily movie. The experience is nowhere close to the same thing as a video store, but I did walk away with a disc in my hand, so that’s nice.
Anyway. The reason I told that brief and sad story is because part of the experience of going to the video store for me includes picking up movies I might otherwise never choose to watch. When I was in the habit, I would go and check out one or two of the newly-released, low budget horror movies every single week. The experience is different than looking for something to rent online because the selection is going to be much more limited, and I don’t have the benefit of immediately watching a trailer to help me choose (I could use my phone to do that, but I consider that cheating). To pick a movie I would only have the box art and the movie’s brief writeup. I’ve found some gems doing that, and I’ve also found some things that are very much not gems. Using Redbox ends up giving me similar limitations in choice, so my resulting movie picks will also be similarly blind. For today, I ended up picking a movie titled I Am Lisa because of its neat cover art and its promise of a revenge movie with werewolves. It’s a fun concept, but I think the filmmakers tried to make a movie that was a bit too far beyond their means.
I Am Lisa is about a young woman, Lisa, who returns to her hometown after her grandmother passes away. The town is small enough to have a police force consisting of only the mother/son duo of Sheriff Deb and Deputy Nick. The sheriff’s daughter, Jessica, is the town bully/drug dealer, and Sheriff Deb supports her daughter in an utterly corrupt and criminal way. So when Lisa reluctantly attempts to tell the sheriff about Jessica threatening and assaulting her one day, Sheriff Deb allows Jessica, her friends, and Deputy Nick to beat Lisa nearly to death before leaving her in the woods for the local wolves to eat. If you’re thinking that things escalate quickly in I Am Lisa, you’d be right. The sheriff and her family are almost cartoonish in how despicable they are.
As you might assume, the wolves to not end up eating Lisa, but one of them does bite her. After recovering and making it to her best friend’s house without the sheriff or anyone else realizing she is still alive, Lisa discovers some changes about herself. For one thing, she heals very quickly. Also, she seems to be craving dog food and raw meat when she was previously a vegetarian. It turns out Lisa might be turning into a werewolf, and she’s having trouble controlling her anger about her attempted murder. What follows is a revenge story that spirals out of Lisa’s control as the sheriff begins to suspect what is happening.
All of that sounds pretty good, right? It does to me, and I did enjoy I Am Lisa in a lot of ways. The characterizations can be somewhat extreme in comical ways such as the sheriff who is vile and evil for no apparent reason and the deputy who firebombs a store in the middle of shopping center in broad daylight. That makes things very black-and-white as far as who to cheer for, and that makes it a light and fun movie. There is also a fair amount of comedy throughout the movie with some fun scenes like Lisa learning more about werewolves by watching movies or Lisa snacking on dog treats while shopping for raw meat. There might also be some unintended comedy with some of the reactions the characters give in certain situations. For example, Lisa’s best friend Sam is very casual and unaffected when Lisa tells her that she just murdered someone in a werewolf rage. Sam just kind of shrugs it off and goes on with her day. Maybe the comedy there was intended, but I don’t think I Am Lisa is really supposed to be that funny of a movie. I could be wrong though, and that kind of ties in to the shortcomings of the film.
Some elements of the movie don’t come across very well either through gaps in the script or by a lack of means to effectively pull off some of the action in scenes. I’m not really talking about plot holes when I say “gaps,” but there are some things that just kind of come out of nowhere or have very little in the way of context. For instance, there’s a character named Dolphus who lives in the woods, and even though we barely see him throughout the movie, he’s meant to be a main threat in the climactic scene. Who is he? I’m not sure. I mean, I know what he’s doing and I know why he is physically present in the climax, but what purpose does he serve other than to be an added threat? What are his relations to any of the other characters? I don’t know. Maybe I missed something, but yeah, I just don’t know.
Plot gaps I can shrug off just fine. So Dolphus is there. So what? It’s fine. The real issue in I Am Lisa is the action. I understand that it’s a very low budget movie, and I’m never going to be the kind of person who dismisses a movie because of the budget, but I think they needed a bit more money to execute some of the scenes they wanted. Money or ingenuity, one of the two.
I Am Lisa is described as a werewolf movie with bloody revenge, but even the simplest actions end up being shot around rather than shown. Here are a few examples. Early in the movie Lisa is driving down a road at night. What’s supposed to happen is a wolf walks out into the middle of the road and stops, and that forces Lisa to slam on the brakes as the wolf stares at her before slowly walking away. What we see though, is Lisa in what looks like a stationary car reacting to something in a shocked manner. We then cut to a tight closeup on a wolf somewhere. Then we cut back to a medium shot of Lisa in the car. It looks like Lisa and the wolf are worlds apart. This same sort of thing happens any time a real wolf is supposed to be in a scene. When Lisa gets bitten by a wolf, we only know this because Lisa says so and we see the aftermath of the bite. I don’t think we see the bite happening, and I don’t think we ever even see Lisa and the wolf in the same shot.
One more pretty egregious example is when the deputy throws a Molotov cocktail through a store window like I mentioned earlier. Deputy Nick is with his sister Jessica, and we stay focused on the two of them in a medium shot as Jessica lights the Molotov and Nick throws it off screen. We hear a sound effect of glass breaking, but we don’t cut back to see the result. We stay focused on Nick and Jessica the whole time. We do see the store burning a few minutes later, but it’s at night in the rain with only a few seconds of some okay CGI flames.
I get it, working around a budget can be difficult, especially when you have big ideas. But to me, I feel like working within the limitations you have can lead to some fantastic ingenuity and some unintended greatness when you do it right. Like, maybe ditch the firebomb scene and try to do something you can actually show to get the same result in the story. If you don’t have the budget for a wolf wrangler or a trained animal you can use with actors, maybe ditch the scene with the actual bite and show a dream sequence with flashes of wolves which is supposed to be Lisa’s dreams when she passed out from the time she was beaten up to the time she wakes up in bed. There are ways around all of it, and some of those ways can create the same or even better effects within the movie.
I don’t want to bash I Am Lisa though, because I did enjoy it for the most part. There were some good and cheesy blood effects later in the movie, and the relationship between Lisa and her best friend Sam was very entertaining. The plot is a basic revenge movie plot, and that’s something I usually enjoy. So yeah, there was a lot to like throughout the movie. If you want to see a full werewolf transformation though, you’re going to be disappointed. Again, a full fur suit for Lisa probably wasn’t in the budget, but she had some neat eye effects and her nails got real sharp. She also looked like a vampire from Buffy the Vampire Slayer by the end of the movie (with a furrowed brow makeup effect). Overall, I had fun with I Am Lisa.
Climate of the Hunter (2019) – A Movie A Day 2021 #25
Climate of the Hunter poster
I was looking for another newly released horror movie to watch when I came across the trailer for Climate of the Hunter, and it intrigued me the most out of the handful of new horror movies released this month. With its strong 1970s vibes, its fullscreen/1.33 aspect ratio, and its promise of some arthouse indie weirdness with vampires, the trailer sold me on a VOD rental. After watching Climate of the Hunter I would debate its categorization as a horror movie, but it did turn out to be an enjoyably quirky and darkly comedic psychological thriller.
So what is Climate of the Hunter about? That might be difficult to pin that down exactly, but I’ll give it shot. A large part of the movie is about family. The story focuses on sisters Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) and their strained relationship. The sisters are staying together in a vacation cabin owned by their family, and the two of them range from passive aggressive to downright hostile in their interactions throughout the film. Their relationship is further tested when a charming and worldly writer named Wesley (Ben Hall) comes to stay in the cabin next door. Alma and Elizabeth are both attracted to Wesley, and Wesley is content to accept affections from them both which, of course, exacerbates their sibling rivalry.
Through multiple dinner conversations (usually involving immaculately prepared 1970s-era dinners, the contents of which are narrated to us, the audience) we learn that Wesley has his own struggles with family, specifically his wife who was recently committed to a mental institution and his son who blames Wesley for his mother’s condition. Add to all of this the fact that Alma’s daughter Rose visits after being somewhat estranged from her mother for years, and you have all the makings of a tense family drama.
Climate of the Hunter is also about mental instability. The very first thing we see in the movie is a typed report describing the mental condition of one of the characters. The prognosis isn’t good, and with delusions, psychotic episodes, and more being planted in our brains right away, it sets us up to expect a difficult time for the people we’re soon to meet. So in a way, Climate of the Hunter is about experiencing the mental decline of one of our main characters. But with the way the story is told, there is a lot of room for us to wonder if that character is sane and has just been put in an insane situation. Why? Because Wesley might be a vampire.
Now don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler. We see vampiric images in the trailer, and every writeup for the movie explicitly states that Wesley might or might not be a vampire. Throughout the many conversations, hints are dropped about his possible blood-sucking proclivities. We also see certain things that would make us believe he is, in fact, a vampire, but there is still some doubt because of how the movie is constructed.
There is a lyrical nature to many scenes throughout Climate of the Hunter. Wesley has an eloquent way of speaking even when he’s talking about some of the most crude things imaginable. Also, Wesley likes to talk a lot. I’ve already mentioned the conversations in the movie a few times, and that’s because most of the movie is centered on long conversations with highly stylized dialogue. The dialogue and deliveries from the actors give the movie a sense of a heightened reality, and that leads into the visuals. Stars shine brighter than they should, lights appear where they shouldn’t, thoughts are represented visually, and dreams blend with reality. Visuals like that aren’t used excessively, but they’re used often enough to keep the audience a bit off balance. But is what we’re seeing simply meant to evoke certain emotions, of are we sharing the delusions of one or more of the characters? Or maybe both? No clear answers are given, and your willingness to accept ambiguity is going to be one of the deciding factors for if you will enjoy Climate of the Hunter or not.
I enjoyed Climate of the Hunter, but it’s definitely going to be an acquired taste for many people. It’s quirky in ways that reminded me slightly of a dark, alternate-universe version of a Wes Anderson movie. Maybe I kept thinking of Wes Anderson because of how the movie is shot (very symmetrical, straight-on shots of characters, quick zooms, etc.), but I do think it’s a valid comparison as far as the aesthetic goes. And really, the 1970s aesthetic is one of the things I really love about the movie. It’s convincing in a way that most modern filmmakers just can’t pull off.
The comedy in Climate of the Hunter is dark, and for the most part it’s very, very dry. It’s more of a smirking movie than a laugh out loud movie, though I did chuckle a few times when a situation caught me off guard. The biggest takeaway as far as a recommendation goes is that the movie is dialogue-heavy. If you enjoy a talky indie movie that gets weird and slightly uncomfortable, then Climate of the Hunter might be for you.
You know, the more I think about it as I’m writing this, the more I’m finding to love about the movie. My initial reaction when finishing it was, “yeah, that was fun,” but now I kind of want to watch it again. I’m sure I will at some point.
So did I answer my question from earlier? What is Climate of the Hunter about? On the surface, it’s not about much. The characters’ fates seem as inevitable as the typed mental report shown to us at the beginning of the film. It’s about a brief moment in the lives of a handful of people whose personal problems begin to become each other’s problems as they discuss life and philosophy over some colorful and not-terribly-appetizing food. But is it about vampires? Maybe.
I remember pouring hours and hours into the first Tomb Raider game when it was released on the Playstation back in 1996. It was one of the early games that I would play over and over to try to explore every inch of the locations and discover every secret. I Instantly became a huge fan of the series and of its main character, Lara Croft. Clearly lots of other people felt the same way I did (and still do) because many more games have been released over the years, and Lara Croft has become something of a pop culture icon. Lara has appeared in pretty much every form of media imaginable, and of course her stories have been adapted into live-action films. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the two movies starring Angelina Jolie as Lara, but I do remember enjoying them pretty well. For me though, the 2018 Tomb Raider movie is the best of the bunch.
Tomb Raider stars Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, and the movie’s look and story are inspired by the 2013 reimagining of the Tomb Raider game series. The plots of the game and movie are vaguely similar, but there are some huge differences between the two that helps each stand on its own without inviting too many direct comparisons. In the movie, Lara Croft is a young woman struggling to make enough money to survive despite have a huge inheritance waiting for her if she chooses to accept it. Her father, Richard Croft (Dominic West), went missing seven years ago and is presumed dead, but Lara feels that if she accepts her inheritance, then she must also accept that her father is truly gone. One day Lara discovers that her father was leading a secret life as something of a treasure hunter, and some clues to his destination seven years ago lead Lara to the island of Yamatai near Japan. Lara’s father was chasing the legend of Himiko, an ancient queen who commanded power over life and death, and when Lara arrives on Yamatai, she discovers that it wasn’t just her father who was searching for Himiko. A group of dangerous mercenaries led by a man named Mathias (Walton Goggins) is on the island, and Lara’s unexpected arrival sets off a chain of events that could lead to dire consequences for the entire world.
Like the game it’s based on, Tomb Raider is full of brutal action and elaborate set pieces. Lara is forced to fight for her life against trained killers as she searches for answers about what happened to her father. Alicia Vikander is perfect for the role of this updated version of Lara Croft, and seeing her in action is a ton of fun. The character arc for Lara is pretty similar to how she progresses in the game, and I very much appreciate that. Lara goes from being overwhelmed and nearly dying multiple times to being a strong and determined force who uses her brains as much as her athletic ability to overcome incredible odds. Walton Goggins is also great as the cruel and merciless Mathias, a man who will do anything to anyone just so long as he can finish his job and go home after so many years on Yamatai.
The action in Tomb Raider is very good, and it does feel a lot like the 2013 game to me. It does take a long while to get into some actual tombs for raiding, but as an introduction to this new Lara Croft, I was still quite entertained. There are a lot of neat puzzles that Lara has to solve, and there are a lot of guys for her to kill, and that’s really what the game series comes down to for the most part. The games do tend to venture into supernatural elements, and that, unfortunately, is where the movie differs from the games the most.
The legend of Himiko is described multiple times throughout the movie, and when I first saw it in the theater I was hoping for a huge final act with some magic and mayhem. The movie goes a different route though, and that did disappoint me somewhat on my initial viewing. I’ve just recently watched it for the second time though, and knowing what to expect definitely helped me enjoy the final act a lot more. If I hadn’t been such a big fan of the games then I wouldn’t have felt that anything was missing. The buildup to the magic-lacking finale is foreshadowed well throughout the movie, I just wasn’t paying much attention to that when I first watched it. I enjoyed Tomb Raider the first time, but I enjoyed it even more the second time.
I’ve heard that a second Tomb Raider starring Alicia Vikander has been announced, but the disruption caused by the pandemic has put it on hold with no set date for when it might come together. Hopefully Tomb Raider II does get made though, because I really enjoyed it. Plus, in the next movie we can get right to the tombs and the raiding without all the buildup! I think Warner Brothers and Sony should get together and work out a deal to create a shared universe with Tomb Raider and the upcoming Uncharted movie. I’d love to see Lara Croft and Nathan Drake chase after the same artifact only to have them team up to defeat some nefarious terrorist organization in the end.
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #23
Bill & Ted Face the Music poster
One of the movies released last year that I was very disappointed I didn’t get to see in the theater was Bill & Ted Face the Music. I love the original two movies, I watched the Bill & Ted cartoon when I was a kid, I bought the comic books, and I even really tried to love the NES game (which I still play every once in a while). But with the lack of open movie theaters last year, Face the Music is one of those movies I never got a chance to see on a big screen. But I’ve now seen it on a relatively small screen, and even though it’s not the same experience it would have been, I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie.
So here’s a quick recap of the series for those unaware. The first movie, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, came out in 1989 and stars Alex Winter as Bill and Keanu Reeves as Ted. Bill and Ted travel through time in a phone booth to collect historical figures so they can pass their history class in order to continue their band, Wyld Stallyns, so they can write a song that will usher in an age of peace and prosperity across the world. The second movie, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, has evil robot versions of Bill and Ted from the future travel back in time to kill the real Bill and Ted before they can win a battle of the bands. Bill and Ted have to find a way back from the afterlife and win the battle of the bands so they can continue improving as musicians and create the music that will create a utopian society.
In Bill & Ted Face the Music, we join the eponymous duo in 2020, and they are still struggling to create the music that will unite the world. Bill and Ted are both married to the medieval princesses that they fell for in the first movie, but Bill and Ted’s abnormally close friendship is putting a strain on their marriages. With their home life in jeopardy and with their musical career going nowhere, Ted is beginning to lose faith in their own abilities to create the music they’re expected to. When things seem like they can’t get any worse, a visit from the future warns Bill and Ted of the imminent collapse of all of space and time if they don’t play the song that unites the world in just over an hour’s time. That sends Bill and Ted on a trip into their own futures to try to take the reality-saving song from their future selves since they don’t think they can write it themselves. Meanwhile, Bill and Ted’s daughters, Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) respectively, travel backward in time to collect a group of iconic historical musicians to perform as their fathers’ backing band. Hijinks ensue, and danger lurks as a confidence-lacking robot from the future is sent through time to kill Bill and Ted before they can complete their mission.
It’s a goofy concept, and I think it’s great. The stakes in the movie are increased from the previous two films with the entirety of life, the universe, and everything on the line, and the traveling through space and time is increased with journeys to the future, past, and even the afterlife all taking place, sometimes simultaneously. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter seem like they’re having a blast revisiting these characters after nearly three decades, and everyone else in the cast looks like they’re having just as much fun. The cast, by the way, is great. I loved seeing Reeves and Winter reunited with William Sadler (and with Hal Landon Jr. as Ted’s father), and everyone new to the series plays their roles fantastically. I especially enjoyed Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, and I quite enjoyed Anthony Carrigan (who I know best as Zsasz from the TV show Gotham) as the killer robot. Carrigan’s robot character caught me off-guard with some of his funny bits, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying his performance. Really though, the movie is an ensemble with Reeves and Winter leading a large group of very funny people.
I very much enjoyed the story as well. It’s silly like it’s supposed to be, and there’s a heart to it that I didn’t quite expect. Maybe because the main goal of the movie is to unite the world through music and I’m a sucker for musical performances in movies, but I was more moved than I thought I would be by the time the credits started to roll. Bill & Ted Face the Music is just has a joy about it in every single scene, and I loved every minute of it. I don’t think it’s my favorite of the series, that honor is still with the Excellent Adventure, but Face the Music is a smart continuation of the series that hits all the right notes. Reviving a series after nearly three decades can be tricky, but I think Face the Music did it right. It brought out enough new characters and new ideas for it to feel fresh, but there were loads of references to the first two movies to satisfy huge nerds like me who adore Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey. It’s campy, silly, funny, and fun. I’ll definitely be watching it again and again.
I’ve been doing this A Movie A Day 2021 challenge for just over three weeks now, and you know what I haven’t watched yet? I haven’t watched any brand new horror movies. Part of the fun of this challenge is clearing out my backlog and discovering movies from the past that I’ve missed out on, but in case you didn’t know, I adore horror movies. I even have a web site about them (among other related things):The Last Theater. So yeah, I should be using part of my challenge to watch lots and lots of new scary movies so I can keep up better with modern times, and so I have something to write/talk about on my site (The Last Theater). With that in mind, I watched Curse of Aurore, a horror movie that was released on VOD on January 12, 2021. As the first horror movie released in 2021 that I’ve seen, I enjoyed it pretty well.
Curse of Aurore is a found-footage horror movie. More specifically, it’s a haunted-house-style movie framed as real footage being shown to us by a YouTuber. I’ll get back the YouTube aspect in a bit, but the main film follows three independent, no-budget filmmakers who are in rural Quebec, Canada to figure out what they want their next movie to be about. Lena, the star of their productions, is staying in a house owned by her family, and she is joined by Aaron, the director, and Kevin, the guy that does everything else. Lena has learned about a local legend that she thinks would be great for a scary movie, and she excitedly pulls Aaron and Kevin along as she tries to dig up more information from the locals.
The legend Lena is chasing is that of Aurore Gagnon, a girl who was killed by her step-mother in 1920 after years of horrible abuse. The tale of Aurore Gagnon is a real-life story (with at least two movies being made about her life), and in the world of Curse of Aurore, supernatural occurrences have been happening for years in the town where young Aurore died. Things get creepier and creepier as Lena, Aaron, and Kevin continue to investigate, and after a while it seems as if their investigations have attracted some unwanted attention.
The story is told in a way that is not unexpected for a supernatural found-footage movie. There are minor scares here and there throughout the first hour or more, and the real action kicks off in the final few minutes. It’s a structure that feels natural in a movie that is supposed to be showing us real people actually filming extraordinary things. Like I said when I wrote about The Last Exorcism, if things got crazy right away, logically the camera would turn off and everyone would just go home. But the writing in Curse of Aurore is good enough to convince me that, for the most part, these people would continue to record even when things started to go poorly for them.
In a movie like this where we’re stuck with essentially just three people for about an hour and a half, it’s important to create interesting characters and dialogue. Maybe it’s because Lena, Aaron, and Kevin are no-budget filmmakers with a passion for movies (which I can relate to), but I enjoyed getting to know these people who I was fairly certain would not be making it to the final credits. They have good banter, and I believed that they were friends even when their personalities began to clash. There’s also a scene towards the middle of the movie that I really enjoyed where Lena breaks down a bit and laments about pouring so much effort into making movies only to have no one see them. I think anyone who tries to do something creative can relate to that on some level, though I do wonder if that was somewhat of a cathartic scene for the people who were actually making Curse of Aurore. Well hey, I saw your movie, and I liked it.
It did feel like there were some red herrings and dead ends plot-wise in the first part of the movie, but in found-footage, I think a lot of that can be attributed to giving the movie a more natural feeling. People say and do things for no good reason all the time. As long as that sort of thing isn’t overdone, I think it can add to the charm of the “real life” footage. And of course, some of the stuff that was said and done was for setting a tone, and some of it made more sense later on as character building.
As for the supernatural aspects of the movie, I mostly enjoyed the way they were handled. If you’ve seen Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, you’ll know that it can turn into something of a game when you’re looking in the background of every scene for when you might see a ghost. Curse of Aurore has a similar approach to a lot of its earlier scares. The camera will catch things that the characters miss, and the first time I thought I saw something I went back to watch the scene again. Some of the ghostly images are pretty obvious if you’re paying attention, but some of them are very subtle and extremely quick. There’s a fair amount of replay value in Curse of Aurore just to go back and try to find more haunting images.
The ghostly things we see are used sparingly which I very much appreciate. I’m sure the budget didn’t allow for elaborate effects to be added to a bunch of scenes, and I think that works in the movie’s favor. Some of the images do feel unnatural in a computer-like way, but they’re supposed to be unnatural anyway. Well, supernatural which is pretty close to unnatural. Overall, the added images were effective more than they weren’t, and they never brought me out of the movie. I liked them, and they were done very well.
The plot did involve some amazing coincidences in order to keep things moving along, but once the movie is over, you could make an argument for the “coincidences” being orchestrated by someone or something. I can’t say anything more without major spoilers though, so I’ll leave it at that. And as for the resolution of the story, even though it wasn’t dissimilar to a number of similarly themed movies, I though it was well done. Again, there would be spoilers if I said more, so you’ll just have to watch the movie or send me a message or something if you want to know what I mean.
I’ve already said a few times now that Curse of Aurore feels like other movies of its type in many ways, but I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I’ve said it before that if a movie is well made, then it’s a good movie even if I’ve basically seen it before. I mean, genre movies are called genre movies for a reason. They follow a familiar pattern and deliver generally expected plot progressions and stories. That’s how a movie fits into a genre. I think that point is lost on like half the people that reviewed Curse of Aurore on IMDB. Anyway, I won’t get into a rant about genre or random people reviewing movies online. I’ll save that for another time. I guess my point here is, don’t believe pretty much any of the written reviews on IMDB. Just believe me. Or don’t. But I do try to be fair.
Anyway.
I enjoyed Curse of Aurore. The one thing I didn’t care for as much was the framing device they used. It’s similar to what I wrote about An American Haunting, if you’re going to frame your movie with something to the extent where the final shots of the movie aren’t going to involve any of your main characters, there needs to be a good reason for it. The framing here focuses on a YouTuber (Casey Nolan of Mind Seed TV) with a horror channel opening a blind box he bought on the dark web. He shows us some of the items in the box, and at first I thought it was kind of clever. He pulls out this red beanie with a hole in it, and when we go to the found-footage, we see one of the characters wearing the beanie in the first scene. Will we see how the beanie got a hole in it? Spoiler, we don’t. Another thing the YouTuber found in the box is a doll with a thumb drive attached to it. The footage we’re watching for the main part of the movie is supposed to be the video found on the drive.
So, I do like the idea of trying to frame the footage in a way that might explain why we are seeing what is essentially an edited down version of what was “really” filmed. Many found-footage movies leave me with the nagging question of, if this is supposed to be real, then who found all the cameras or tapes or discs or whatever, took the time to edit it, and then sent it out for the world to see? Having the YouTuber show it to us answers half of the question (he’s showing it to us), but the half of the question about who put the footage on the drive and sold it on the dark web is left unanswered. I don’t need an answer for that really (ambiguity can be good), but the way the footage ends really seems like anyone who might’ve had access to it wouldn’t want it to get out. That’s a small complaint though.
I also didn’t necessarily care for how the YouTuber reacted at the end of the movie. After watching the footage with us, he says he’s done and just walks away. That’s fine, but clearly he still did multiple takes with different camera setups, he edited the footage, and he still released “real” crimes for the world to see. It felt weird to me, and I didn’t care for that being the thing the movie left me with. I would’ve rather ended the movie with Lena, Aaron, and Kevin. But now that I think about it, if the whole YouTuber thing is supposed to be a comment on the irresponsibility of some YouTubers putting out stuff that they shouldn’t, then I take back everything I just wrote. It’s a brilliant ending (though I’d still rather be left with Lena, Aaron, and Kevin).
If you’re looking for a pretty good horror movie to start 2021 with and enjoy some supernatural found-footage, I’d recommend Curse of Aurore. It’s a fun movie with some creepy moments and satisfying finish. You can find it for rent on all sorts of streaming services including, yes, YouTube. I watched it on Amazon, but it’s cheap anywhere, so give the trailer a watch and go from there.
Beast from Haunted Cave: Elvira’s Movie Macabre Edition (1959/2011) – A Movie A Day 2021 #21
Elvira’s Movie Macabre DVD double feature (the one I watched).
Cheesy monster movies are great, but what makes a cheesy monster movie even better? Elvira! I’ve been watching Elvira host bad horror movies for as long as I can remember, and the original Movie Macabre theme music from the 1980s is forever imprinted in my brain. The original run of Movie Macabre ended in 1986, but I still regularly watch the show on VHS, DVD, and online. The show was revived in 2010 but lasted for just under a year before going away again. Episodes from the revival of Movie Macabre, including a few unaired episodes, have been released on DVD, and I, of course, have a few of those discs. So when I was looking for my daily movie to watch, picking an Elvira episode I hadn’t seen yet was an easy decision.
The movie I chose was Beast from Haunted Cave. The film is a Roger Corman produced monster movie about a gang of thieves who concoct a seemingly unnecessarily complicated plan to steal a few gold bars. The gang consists of Alex, the leader of the group, Gypsy, who is (sort of) Alex’s woman, Byron, the comic relief, and Marty, the uh… other guy. Alex wants to rob a bank near a busy ski resort, and he has Marty set off a bomb in a local mine to draw attention (and police) away from the city while they go to work. After robbing the bank, the whole group will take a multiple-day cross-country ski trip with the ski resort’s instructor, Gil. The goal is to avoid local police by travelling into the snowy wilderness with Gil and waiting at his solitary cabin in the woods until a plane arrives to pick them up. Things don’t go according to plan though. The plane is delayed because of a snow storm, the almost-always drunk Gypsy has the hots for Gil, and the bombing of the mine has woken a spider-like beast that is following the group as they trek towards the cabin.
What ensues is a cheaply-made crime thriller with some monster horror tossed in from time to time. The filmmakers did the best they could with a low budget, which means that the beast is rarely seen, and when it is on camera, it’s usually too dark to make anything out. We’ll see a leg come into frame and grab someone, or we’ll see what might be the web-covered head of the beast bobbing around for a second, but until the finale, we don’t see much of the monster at all. So what we’re left with instead is a movie about a bunch of bank robbers who are basically holding a guy hostage even though he’s unaware of it. There is more drama than there are scares, but I still had fun with the movie.
The dialogue is campy, the acting will often make you smirk, and the writing is just cheesy enough keep you interested enough to stick around until the beast finally starts to do stuff. The only thing I really didn’t care for was the comic relief guy, Bryon. I didn’t even realize he was supposed to be funny until later in the movie, and when I did realize he was trying to be funny, he just made me a little sad. Byron does have an unusually good story arc though, one that’s bigger than a lot of the other characters, so I suppose I don’t dislike Byron. I just wish he hadn’t been so annoying in the first hour.
Beast from Haunted Cave is fun though. It’s fun to joke about, but I also just enjoy it for what it is. I will say that having Elvira pop up every once in a while with her skits and comments made the experience much more enjoyable, but I’d probably watch Beast from Haunted Cave even if I didn’t have the DVD of the Movie Macabre version.
Elvira’s bit for this movie is that she’s cutting costs for her show. After all, if Roger Corman can produce a movie like Beast from Haunted Cave for like $100, then surely Elvira can do some skits on the cheap, right? So Elvira fires nearly all of her staff and ends up having to do everything herself. Insert some bad puns and a few boob jokes, and you have another great episode of Movie Macabre. Watching this definitely made me want to build up my collection of Elvira movies.
An American Haunting (2005) – A Movie A Day 2021 #20
An American Haunting poster
As big of a fan of horror movies as I am, years of exposure to silver-screen scares seem to have desensitized me somewhat. Great horrors movies can still scare me in the moment, but few of those scares stick with me after the credits have rolled. Of all the genres and sub-genres of horror movies that exist, films about ghosts and hauntings can often be a big exception to my quickly-fading-fright rule. A well-made ghost movie will often stick with me, maybe for the night or maybe even for a few days or longer. Obviously not every movie about ghosts will have the same effect, and there are plenty of average and below average haunting movies out there, but every time I watch a ghost movie I get a little excited about the possibility of a truly creepy and effective story. So, knowing that An American Haunting is based on the supposedly true story of the Bell Witch haunting, I was cautiously looking forward to a few good scares when I picked it for my daily movie. I was cautious not only because of the potential for a nervous night’s sleep, but also because I’d known about it for a while and had sort of avoided it because I didn’t want it to be bad. Well, after seeing An American Haunting I slept just fine, but the movie was a bit better than I was expecting.
My expectations about the quality of the movie likely had a lot to do with the awful experience I had with a movie from 2013 titled The Bell Witch Haunting. I don’t like to bash movies, but that thing was awful. And yeah, I know the filmmakers behind An American Haunting have nothing to do with The Bell Witch Haunting, but the association in my brain was hard to shake. Plus, I’ve seen plenty of not-great haunted house movies, and the trailer for An American Haunting was giving me strong not-great vibes. An American Haunting certainly isn’t great, but it’s good for what it is. That’s hardly a resounding endorsement, so allow me to elaborate.
An American Haunting tells the story of the Bells, a family living in Tennessee in the early 1800s. The family consists of father John Bell (Donald Sutherland), mother Lucy Bell (Sissy Spacek), and their children Betsy, John Jr., Richard, and Joel. After John gets on the wrong side of neighbor Kate Batts in a land deal gone bad, the Bell family begins to experience an increasingly violent haunting. The focus of the haunting is young Betsy Bell. Betsy is tormented night after night not just with sounds and moving objects, but she is eventually physically assaulted by the unseen force. Betsy is dragged across the floor, lifted into the air, and slapped repeatedly as the force steadily increases its tortures. The local preacher and the community school teacher join the Bell family to try to figure out how to stop the haunting, but things only get worse when John becomes a target of assault as well.
Eventually certain things come to light and the reasons behind the haunting become more or less clear, but the resolution of the movie leaves a lot to be desired. The plot is largely based on the “true” accounts of the Bell Witch, but some very generous liberties are taken with the story, especially in the later stages. Creative license is great, but I didn’t really enjoy how things were wrapped up. It made sense from a high-level look at things, but when you really get into what happened throughout the movie, it doesn’t all come together super well. There is also an unnecessary framing device where the whole story about the Bell family is being read from a letter found in what I think is supposed to be the same house in the present day. So the main bulk of the movie is a flashback for some reason, and the final scene feels pointless. I can’t say what happens without spoiling the whole movie, but basically it’s a thing where you’re meant to feel something for a few characters that you know absolutely nothing about and haven’t even seen for about an hour and a half. I would have very much preferred if the story had only taken place in the past.
The stuff surrounding the Bell family is better than I was expecting though. I didn’t know Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek were in the movie until they both showed up on screen, so that was a very nice surprise. They added some much-needed weight to the scenes involving the Bells.
As for the haunting itself, even though it was done pretty well, it’s approached in a way that I’m not always crazy about. I prefer quiet and creepy over loud and scary, and the haunting of Betsy Bell was often very, very loud. Screams, crying, slapping, and slamming were a constant accompaniment to the presence of the entity in the Bell house. To me, that’s not as unnerving as quiet moments where I wonder along with the characters, “did I really just see what I thought I saw?”
There is no ambiguity about what is happening when we see Betsy being suspended in mid-air and smacked around by invisible hands. Despite there clearly being something supernatural in the house, there is an agonizingly long sequence where the Bell family tries to convince the school teacher that his rational explanations aren’t sufficient. Thankfully he is eventually convinced that something supernatural is going on, and we then can finally move on with the story. That whole section of disbelief felt like it put the movie on pause though, because we (the audience and the characters) all knew what was happening except for this one guy who we apparently need on-board before we can move on.
Other people may enjoy the loud and obvious approach to the scares though. They’re not my favorite thing, but they didn’t prevent me from enjoying the movie fine. Like I said, I didn’t care for the wrap-up, but up to that point I enjoyed seeing John, Lucy, and Betsy deal with their situation. I probably won’t ever watch An American Haunting again, but I’m glad I finally saw it. I’m still looking for a really great Bell Witch movie though. I know it can be done.
Found footage movies have a bad reputation. Ever since the subgenre’s popularization with The Blair Witch Project back in 1999, general audiences have tended to look down on found footage movies. Granted, the proliferation of hastily made found footage horror movies in the ensuing decades has set the bar pretty low, but the when the style is done well, the resulting movies can be great. In my opinion, The Last Exorcism is one of those great found footage movies.
The Last Exorcism follows Reverend Cotton Marcus, a charismatic preacher with a flair for showmanship. Marcus believes that by preaching he can perform a valuable mental service for those who find comfort in religion, but events in his life have caused him to no longer believe in the spiritual side of what he does. Marcus has lost his faith in God, and that lack of faith has caused him to re-think his stance on some of the more archaic practices in his religion. Specifically, stories of children being harmed and killed by modern-day exorcisms have led to Marcus feeling the need to expose exorcisms as fraudulent and unnecessarily dangerous. So with that in mind, Marcus invites a two-person documentary crew to follow him as he performs one final exorcism with the goal of showing that there are no gods or demons involved, just people with serious mental problems.
The setup for the exorcism itself is pretty standard as far as these things go. The person possessed is a young girl who has been living an isolated life in rural Louisiana with her extremely overprotective father. The girl, Nell, is sweet and naïve about the ways of the world, and it becomes apparent that her father, Louis, has been raising her with a strict and fundamental understanding of Christianity. Nell also has a brother, Caleb, who is protective of his sister in a different way than their father. Caleb sees the danger in his father’s way of thinking, and he blames Louis for Nell’s problems. That anger is evident right away when Marcus and his crew arrive at Louis’s house, and it sets up some great tension between Caleb and Marcus very early in the movie. From there, Marcus gets to know the family and goes about his fake exorcism. Things begin to get out of control though, and there may be more to Nell’s problems than Marcus was prepared for.
So yeah, the setup isn’t super original, but the difference between The Last Exorcism and a bunch of other exorcism movies in in the stylistic approach and in the characters. First of all, I think found footage is a great format for a movie like this. I’ve seen some actual documentaries on exorcisms (there’s even one on Netflix right now called The Devil and Father Amorth made by William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist), and the pseudo-documentary style of the early portion of The Last Exorcism feel very similar to a lot of those. Of course with something like this I always end up questioning the logic of having the footage edited so nicely if it were footage that had actually been found somewhere, but that aside, the filmmakers used the format extremely effectively.
As I said, the first part of the movie feels very much like a documentary. We get to know Reverend Marcus and his motivations, and he comes across as likable and sympathetic. The actor playing Marcus, Patrick Fabian, does a fantastic job. He infuses a certain degree of smarm and sarcasm into Marcus, but never so much that you start to dislike him. There are enough funny moments that you start to smile with him, and there are enough quiet moments that you begin to understand that he’s taking a huge personal risk by doing what he’s doing. Turning his back on the church could have dire consequences for his family, but he’s doing what he believes is right. All of that comes across very effectively through Patrick Fabian’s performance.
After Marcus and his crew get to the farmhouse, the tension begins to rise. Part of that is thanks to Caleb, played by the great Caleb Landry Jones, and part of the tension increases naturally as Nell’s situation starts to unravel before our eyes. The found footage style really works to add an immediacy to that tension. Not only are you right there with everyone in the house with the chance that some very dark forces will be looking right at the camera/at you, but as the tension and action ramp up, the cameraman becomes less careful with his shooting style. Yes, there is a decent amount of shaky cam in the later stages of the movie, but that’s never really bothered me. To me, the shaky cam is part of the effectiveness of the style. We’re not supposed to see everything clearly, and that adds to the terror.
In the later stages of the movie you might start to question why the camera is still recording, but the movie does an admirable job of setting up everyone’s motivations enough so that most questions of that type have more or less been addressed. Well, maybe not at the very end of the movie, but I think a little suspension of disbelief is warranted given the strong setups earlier in the movie.
I’ve already talked about how good Reverend Marcus is, but the rest of the cast is great as well. Nell is played by Ashley Bell, and she really gets into her role. Nell is rather childlike when we first meet her, which makes sense given her background, but she is also very convincing when she goes to some of her darker places. Caleb Landry Jones plays Nell’s brother Caleb like a bomb about to go off. He seems dangerous right from the start, but once the family drama begins to come to light, you might be more on his side that you previously thought. And the father, Louis, is played very well by Louis Herthum. Louis is strong and stubborn, but there’s also a deep sadness driving him forward. He seems like he’s about to go over the edge, but what that means for everyone in the house remains unclear at first.
So yeah, I love The Last Exorcism. I’ve seen it a few times now, and I enjoy it every time. Like many found footage movies, the action and terror are built up to, so the most exciting bits are towards the end of the movie, but that feels more realistic to me. If you have scary, life-threatening stuff going on early in a found footage movie, then I have a harder time believing that the people involved wouldn’t just leave. In The Last Exorcism, I understand why the characters do what they do even if I don’t agree with all of their decisions. The writing and the acting make me believe that they believe they are doing the right thing pretty much all the time. But yeah, if you’re not into a slower buildup for a series of payoffs later on, then this movie might not be for you. But if you’re looking for a good found footage movie with some memorable characters and scenes, then The Last Exorcism should be on your list. I’ve read reviews where people say they don’t like the ending (I’m phrasing that way more politely than they usually do), but I think the ending, bonkers as it is, was well done and was foreshadowed in a rather sensible fashion. That’s all I’ll say about it though. Check it out, then we can talk about that ending. By the way, don’t watch this trailer if you don’t want spoilers…
The King of Fighters (2010) – A Movie A Day 2021 #18
KOF DVD cover/poster
I love video games, but I’ve never really gotten into fighting games. I understand the appeal, and I’ve tried to get into certain fighting game franchises over the years, but at a certain point I always get bored and put the game away forever. Even the initial Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat crazes that happened when I was young couldn’t instill a love of fighting games within me. So for me, a movie based on a not-as-popular-but-still-probably-good fighting game franchise such as The King of Fighters holds no nostalgia value nor any particular affection for the characters. To me, The King of Fighters might as well be any other low budget martial arts/action movie, and as such, I think it’s pretty okay.
The thing that really drew me to want to watch The King of Fighters is the cast. Specifically, seeing Ray Park and Maggie Q on the cast list made this an easy decision for my daily movie. I’ve been a fan of Ray Park since he first appeared as Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, and I’ve been watching more and more Maggie Q movies over the past year as I become a bigger fan of hers as well. The rest of the cast is good and fine, but I’m glad Maggie Q and/or Ray Park were in nearly every scene.
As I understand it, the The King of Fighters game series is based on a fighting tournament. I’m sure the various characters each have their own background stories that play out as you, the player, progress through more and more fights, but at its core the game is about a tournament. That sounds like an easy enough premise for an action movie, but it’s also a premise that has been done countless times. I suppose the makers of the The King of Fighters movie wanted to add more originality to their story, so what we get instead of a tournament is a sci-fi/fantasy adventure with a man named Rugal (Ray Park) trying to take over the world. At least, I think that’s what he’s trying to do. Regardless, Rugal is bad and must be stopped.
Let me back up a bit though. The main character of the movie is Mai Shiranui (Maggie Q). When we first see Mai, she uses a Bluetooth-style headset to transport herself to another dimension where she fights some guy in some friendly competition (judging by their banter). This is the King of Fighters tournament. Mai wins the fight, and she touches a glowing orb which transports her back to our dimension where almost no time has passed. We don’t learn about the alternate dimension stuff right away, and the rules regarding traveling back and forth remain unclear for a very long time, but that’s what’s happening in that opening scene.
Mai’s first fight is technically the only tournament match we see in the entire movie. After that, Rugal steals some ancient artifacts which are tied to the alternate dimension, and he attempts to use the artifacts to summon Orochi, an ancient being of unlimited power represented on-screen by a floating ball of snakes. Rugal’s plan is put on hold when he realizes he lacks an artifact needed to take Orochi’s power. Rugal’s backup plan is to lure other tournament fighters into the alternate dimension so he can take over their minds and use them to help him get the final artifact. Meanwhile, Mai is also on the trail of the artifact, and that leads her to Kyo Kusanagi, the last in line in the legendary Kusanagi clan and the key to defeating Orochi.
That’s just about enough plot setup. I think you get the idea of where this is headed. Mai ends up assembling a group of people to fight Rugal, then they all end up battling in a climactic, multi-layered fight sequence. The big final battle is very entertaining in a lot of ways, but the trek to get there isn’t nearly as fun. Everything I explained above is only part of the complicated story that unfolds in the first hour of the movie. There’s a lot more going on, mostly interpersonally between Mai and her group, and a lot of it feels unnecessary. That feeling was confirmed for me when I ended up enjoying the final thirty minutes of The King of Fighters. What that tells me is there should have been less mystical mumbo jumbo and more punching and kicking.
To be fair, there are fight scenes sprinkled throughout the first hour of the movie, and they’re mostly a good time. Ray Park is fun as an over-the-top villain, and he can absolutely fight. There’s a lot of goofiness in Rugal’s personality, but that’s fine. As long as he beats people up and it looks cool, I’m fine with it. All that said, the action doesn’t really kick off until just past the hour mark. By then you might have given up on The King of Fighters, but if you’ve stuck around, then you’re in for a treat. Well, maybe not a treat, but you are in for a neat series of fights.
One thing I thought was kind of funny is just how much this movie feels like it should have been made in the nineties. And I’m not even talking about the special effects which are just okay. A lot of what I’m referring to has to do with the way nearly every scene was shot. I don’t know if the film crew lost their tripods or what, but it felt like there are almost no level shots in the movie (except near the end when they decided to mimic to look of two fighters squaring off in one of the games). The King of Fighters has Dutch angles for days, and you might find yourself tilting your head in response to the near-constant angling of the camera. And yeah, I know Dutch angles aren’t exclusive to the nineties, but those combined with the cheap effects and fast-motion pans just gave me that feeling.
But now I’m just looking for stuff to pick apart. Overall, The King of Fighters isn’t a great movie, but the final fights were fun. I don’t know how closely the movie sticks to its video game source material, so fans of the games may have a much more extreme reaction than I had to it. I understand that Kyo is quite popular and is one of the main characters from the games, but the way the movie is structured really made me feel like Mai was the main character. I guess Kyo had to be the one to rise up in the final battle and become the focus, but for me, not being a fan of the games, I felt a little cheated that Mai took somewhat of supporting role in the end. But that’s another nitpick. Maggie Q and Ray Park were good, so I was happy enough to watch the movie.
