Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

It’s been a long day and I’ve got an early morning so I don’t have much to say tonight. I love Katharine Isabelle and she’s in this movie, so I like this movie a lot. It’s ostensibly about family, but really it’s about, well, torment. It gets a bit graphic and disturbing at times. The story is reasonably interesting and the ending satisfying.

As some kind of social/political allegory this movie is a bit overbearing and riding a slippery slope in an extreme direction. As a vampire movie, it’s pretty damn entertaining. Or at least refreshing in that these vampires don’t sparkle, they don’t go to high school, and they definitely don’t get tangled in love triangles with werewolves.

No, these are traditional vampires – stakes and sunlight kills them, and they need human blood or they’ll turn into mutated versions of themselves left with nothing but a primal need to feed. And there’s a lot of blood in this movie. Just not enough to sustain a vampire population much longer.

I could have done without the heavy handed clarity around whose side the filmmakers were on – if the contrast between the gloomy blue of the night world and the bright vibrancy of the daytime weren’t clear enough, the cure (and the twist) will be. But the world this movie takes place in is an interesting one even if its characters are pretty flat, and what this movie lacks in scares it makes up for in bloody action scenes.

Overall it’s reasonably entertaining, and it does get some credit for bringing the traditional vampire story back into the mainstream. No sparkling necessary.

This movie had a lot of promise but did a lot of stupid things. In turn, its characters also did a lot of stupid things. It’s still a decent watch, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it to get better – it won’t.

I did like the opening credits sequence though. While it wasn’t totally understated, it did a better job setting the tone and mood for the movie than any other part of the movie did. It’s also where the music really shines in this one, especially since it’s a bit overdone throughout the rest of the film.

Sadly it’s been a long and warm and busy day today, so I don’t have as much to say as I’d hoped. Which is sad, because there’s a lot of this movie. It’s long. Like James Cameron long. Oh, and did I mention it was written and directed by James Cameron?

So the dialogue at times sounds like James Cameron, the action sequences are loud and deliberate like James Cameron’s usually are, and the actors are familiar faces that seem to be favorites of none other than James Cameron. But it’s a damn good James Cameron film at that.

This movie had an okay premise, an okay cast, and okay pacing. Overall? It was okay.

In honor of today’s news that a federal panel has approved the first use of CRISPR genome-editing technology in humans, I chose this movie. It definitely had promise. An intriguing premise, a high quality cast, a writer/director whose previous work I liked. It should have been awesome. Instead it was…weird. Scary, yes, but mostly just weird.

Oh, and with a whole lot of “what did you think was going to happen?” It almost makes me wonder what experiences Vincenzo Natali (who, by the way, wrote and directed Cube as well as this) has had that he chooses such a…distinctive direction to take this movie in.

I’ll admit that I haven’t read up much on the mythology behind this one, and it’s less enjoyable watching it without someone who can translate all of the Cantonese, but this is still an okay movie. Or maybe it’s just that I like Amy Smart so much. And there’s a lot of Amy Smart in this movie.

I was considering going with something holiday appropriate like The Stepfather but it was hot and I was lazy, so I ended up watching this movie instead. It’s pretty boring, which is a shame because it has such an interesting cast. I guess the cast themselves were fine – everyone was believable and earnest. I even believed that Olivia Wilde and Josh Duhamel could be brother and sister! Too bad this movie was so boring I don’t remember their character names. I think Duhamel’s character was named Alex?

I definitely don’t remember the name of Melissa George’s character, but her halting understanding of Portuguese was really well acted and (spoiler alert) is likely the reason any of them get out alive. But there’s not really a lesson here. No justice is really served for either side at the end of this as far as I can tell.

This movie was okay. Well it was actually boring, but everyone in it is just so damn pretty that I had to give it at least three out of five. It barely deserves that – the story is that boring.

Weirdly though, it’s somehow watchable and the pacing is fine so it never drags on it just…doesn’t tell a story. It does have a pretty damn good soundtrack, though.

I haven’t watched an Australian movie in a while but I have been talking to a lot of Australians recently so I felt it only fitting to watch this one tonight. To be clear though, no one I’ve been talking to is anything like anyone in this movie, except for the fact that they’re a person (and these characters are barely that).

The entirety of my review tonight was going to be “movies are stupid” because that’s how I feel right now, but this is an incredibly not stupid movie so it didn’t feel right. There’s a lot to be said for this movie, and maybe you’ll get to read some of it next week when I watch the first sequel.

I saw this movie in the theater (gasp!) by myself (double gasp!) outside Universal Studios in Los Angeles on a very hot day in 2012. The good news is, I still like it even when I’m not just using the theater for its air conditioning. The bad news is, that story is way less relevant tonight when it’s a brisk 58 degrees Fahrenheit outside in the middle of June (literally, the middle of June).

It’s not a perfect movie, but it kept me entertained a few years ago and it kept me entertained tonight. It’s probably not for folks who aren’t into thrillers, but it’s not terribly graphic or disturbing and the story is both intricate and intriguing.

I picked this one because it has Tobin Bell in it and was directed by Victor Salva (of Jeepers Creepers and Jeepers Creepers 2 fame). Luckily neither disappointed me! I find Tobin Bell is usually the best part of whatever he’s in and that’s never been more true than in this movie. Tobin Bell’s kind of a badass in this one and it’s almost worth a four out of five just for that.