Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

I really feel like I shouldn’t like this movie. I mean, the acting isn’t great, the dialogue is awful, and the music is ridiculous.

And yet, somehow, I still think it’s pretty great. Even almost 20 years since its release, I could still watch this movie over and over and over again.

I think I like Stephen King best when he’s really imaginative. The Regulators and Desperation are two of my favorite King novels, and there is some seriously fantastical stuff in them.

So it makes sense that I’ve never read Cujo. I do find it interesting that I like horror movies best when they’re more grounded in reality, but horror fiction best when it’s not.

Okay, so maybe I kind of have a thing for horror movies that straddle the line between horror and other genres. Which isn’t to say that I don’t love a good, old-fashioned, classic scary story, because I do…I just tend to gravitate towards the movies that mean a little bit more than a few terrifying moments.

And yes, that’s where this movie falls. Somewhere inside the horror genre but also squarely inside the romance genre. And yes, I’m a hopeless romantic. So of course I liked this one.

I’ve really got to stop going in to M. Night Shyamalan movies with high hopes. Or high expectations. It just never works out the way I want it to. Which isn’t to say that his movies aren’t decent movies – they’re okay, they’re just a bit formulaic and it’s not a formula I particularly care for.

This is yet another one that fits that mold. On the plus side, I was happy not to see one of those revelation sequences where all the clues leading up to the reveal are flashed on screen. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else special about this movie.

Ah, another Stephen King story I haven’t yet read. I feel like I’ve already read so much of his that it’s always surprising to see just how much I haven’t yet read. Anyway, add this one to the list of things I eventually want to read someday.

This movie was pretty good, but not great. The acting was fine, and the setting was definitely creepy, but I just couldn’t get into it.

This may have been partly because I found the “found footage” aspect a bit dizzying and nauseating, and partly because there just wasn’t a good payoff at the end.

I liked this one. A lot. Like, a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever loved every film in a series so damn much. The first one in a class of its own for all sorts of reasons, but these second two because Edgar Frog is just a fantastic character, and Corey Feldman, well, is Edgar Frog. In fact, if you told me that vampires do exist and Corey Feldman actually slays vampires, I’d probably believe you. Or at least I’d really want to believe you.

I think I’m glad that it took 21 years for these sequels to come out. They seem to have been thought through pretty well. Corey Feldman has only become more Frog-like as he’s aged. And I don’t think I even saw the original until 10 years after its release (though in the years since then it’s made quite an impression on me).

I was a little hesitant to watch this since I loved the original so much and sequels (especially horror sequels) often aren’t as good as their predecessors, but I gave it a shot because of Corey Feldman.

And you know what? It wasn’t bad! In fact, I rather liked it. Not quite as much as the original, but that movie is such a huge part of who I am now that I can’t really expect many other movies to mean as much to me. And Edgar Frog is still an awesome character.

This is one of those movies that has had a lasting impact on me. The more I think about it, I realize it’s informed a bunch of aspects of my life: my brief obsession with Kiefer Sutherland that led me to write a fan letter to him describing the dream I had in which he was my father (to which I received no response, of course)…my love for cover songs (and Echo and the Bunnymen)…my affinity for scary movies and vampire novels.

I hadn’t watched this in a couple years, but the sense of nostalgia and whimsy I felt watching it tonight was awesome. Almost 30 years since it came out, this is still one of the best vampire movies I’ve ever seen and absolutely one of my favorite movies.

I liked this movie a lot. I was surprised at how much I liked it. I was surprised at how much I liked both Abigail Breslin and Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, in particular. I’ve seen them both in many things but never really considered either of them great for scary movies.

Then again, this isn’t really a scary movie. It’s a sad movie. It’s a zombie movie. But it’s not really scary, and that’s okay.

Take my rating today with a grain of salt – I think this movie was actually pretty good, I just wasn’t really in the right mood to be impressed by it.

It’s got a good story, a good cast, and good background music. The opening credits aren’t too long or ostentatious and the evil creature is pretty damn scary.

This one was weird. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great, it was just weird.

It started off interesting – I really liked how there was no background music during the opening sequence, which definitely had promise. Then the opening credits went on a bit too long and its jump cuts got a bit too distracting. In fact, that’s kind of how I feel about this whole movie. It went on too long and its various twists or jump cuts or scene changes became distracting and even disorienting at times.

I remember being really excited for this when the first trailers came out. I mean, a horror movie with Donald Glover? Yes, please! But then it came and went in theaters (as movies often do for me), and I didn’t watch it until it appeared on Netflix a little while back.

Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed. The first time I watched it or this time. It’s a good, scary movie from start to finish.