Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

I finally feel mostly caught up on sleep, but I don’t have much to say about tonight’s movie. I definitely liked it, though.

It had Sharni Vinson and Charles Dance! Both of whom were awesome (Charles Dance a bit more chilling in this role than the last role I saw him in, Sharni Vinson not quite as awesome in this role than the last role I saw her in).

The story is an interesting one, the setting a wonderfully creepy one (have I mentioned I like old abandoned buildings?), and the accents adorably Australian ones (well, except for Charles Dance and Rachel Griffiths, but that’s probably for the best).

So, I have a lot of thoughts about this movie but very few of them are cohesive enough to write out. I’ll start with this: I liked it. I liked it quite a bit. It was reasonably well acted and there were moments when it was downright terrifying.

So I liked it. But it definitely wasn’t perfect. I say it was well acted, which is true, but I didn’t buy the roles for the two sisters – having only seen Sofia Black-D’Elia (Emma) as Sage in Gossip Girl and Analeigh Tipton (Stacey) as the girl next door in Crazy, Stupid, Love I just couldn’t get behind that casting decision. I would have switched the girls’ roles if this were my movie.

I was mostly excited to finally watch a Sunday night movie that wasn’t part of the Saw franchise, with just a little bit of anxiety about having to find another film to watch. Then I found this one.

And let me tell you, it almost makes me wish there were another Saw movie to have watched instead.

Okay, so maybe choosing what movie to watch based on the fact that James Marsters is in it wasn’t the best route to a good horror movie, but one with James Marsters and Tony Todd? I expected better than this. This was bad. Not completely unwatchable, but close to it.

Amazon recommended this to me and I figured it was seasonally appropriate so I figured I’d give it a shot. I liked it way more than I thought I would.

I say that mostly because this movie didn’t seem sure of what it wanted to be and I usually hate that in a film. Somehow it worked for this film?

It wasn’t quite a horror comedy, but it was funny (and not in that terrible, so bad it’s funny kind of way). It wasn’t quite a parody either.

I’m still really tired so this is still really short.

I like this one. The acting is great (even the kids!), the story is interesting, and it’s definitely creepy.

It’s a bit slow at times but not overly so. It’s not too graphic or disturbing but it might give you nightmares for a while.

I don’t really have much to say about this one. I liked it for the most part. It’s an anthology of three stories (plus a wrapper story) and they’re all pretty entertaining.

I’m still not caught up on sleep, and now I’ve got a literal pain in the neck bothering me, so this likely won’t be as verbose as it could be. But I’ll start off by saying that I really love this movie.

I’ve seen it several times and every damn time it ends I’m crying. Sure, it’s not quite as terrifying or mysterious after the first watch – but if you’ve never seen this movie before, it’s very much terrifying and mysterious.

This was pretty good. The acting is believable and the story interesting (if not original).

The found footage/fake documentary format is a bit tired but it works here for the most part.

It gets weirdly heavy handed with its message at the very end but otherwise it’s a very watchable, creepy horror movie. I approve!

I was a bit skeptical of this one at first as I wasn’t sure Leigh Whannell could pull off a horror comedy, but I really liked it.

It didn’t dwell too much on the cutesy side of things and the comedy was reasonably smart.

I loved the cast and the special effects were great.

Basically this is a really fun movie to watch. I’m still sleepy today so I’m still leaving this short, but I definitely recommend this one if you’re into, umm…zombie comedies? Zomedies?

Well, we’re finally at the end. I wish I were a little less sleepy tonight because this one actually wasn’t bad.

I felt like the story was a bit truer to the intent of the original movie. I was happy that mostly everyone got what was coming to them. And I was happy to see (spoiler ahead) Dr. Gordon make his appearance.

I’d definitely give this one four out of five stars, and for more than just Sean Patrick Flannery! Oh yeah – he’s in this too.

I was about to ask myself (or rather, ask you) where I find these movies, but this one I got straight from Milo Ventimiglia’s IMDb page, so I suppose I already know the answer.

To perhaps no one’s shock or amazement, this movie was about family, love, and loss – and I liked it quite a bit.

I’ll admit, this one was better than I was expecting it to be. It wasn’t great, but it had enough going for it that I felt it deserved a four out of five.

The cast worked well together and there didn’t seem to be any out-of-place terrible actors in the bunch.  The story made sense for the most part and the tension definitely built up throughout the movie.

Where it falls apart is in its exposition. I felt like the cards were shown too early and there wasn’t much payoff from the “twist” at the very end. Like, you already know who’s holding them captive…no one does anything surprising…and it ends basically as you’d expect.

I know this is one of those iconic ’80s horror movies, but I’m admitting to you all right now that tonight was the first time I’d ever seen it.

Sure, I knew most of what it was about but I don’t think I’d ever realized that Catherine Hicks (whom I know from 7th Heaven which I totally never ever watched) and Chris Sarandon were in it. In fact, I may have been confusing Child’s Play with Problem Child because I kept expecting John Ritter to pop up on screen (he never did).