Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

This movie was pretty okay. It felt really slow for the first half hour or so and never quite figured out the right pace to keep the audience engaged.

I love Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It’s one of my favorite comedy films and I’ve seen it a bunch of times. There’s a scene in it where they’re making fun of Kristen Bell’s eponymous character for a terrible horror movie she did about evil cell phones, and I have to imagine this is the movie the writers had in mind for that scene.

And they’re totally right to make fun of it. This movie is pretty ridiculous. But it’s not all bad, and it did keep me reasonably entertained throughout. It’s definitely not Wes Craven’s best film (not even close), and you can tell from the awkward dialogue that the screenplay was his work.

I don’t have too much to say about this one except that I’ve always liked it. It’s creepy and it capitalizes on a couple of my darkest fears – being alone in the dark and feeling like everyone thinks you’re crazy.

Anyway, it’s creepy and interesting and well paced. Laura Regan is always great, and Ethan Embry and Marc Blucas are also pretty good in this. It’s only PG-13 so it’s not too graphic or disturbing, but it’s definitely entertaining. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a good scare.

I mentioned yesterday that I saw this version first and liked it. And it’s true – while I didn’t really like Michael Bay’s remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, I did like this one. In fact, aside from seeing his name in the opening credits, there was only one point during this remake where I even remembered that it was a Michael Bay movie (the car crash scene, specifically).

I didn’t realize this until seeing the original, but there were some interesting choices made for this film that I kind of liked. For one thing, it’s clear early on that the gender balance is better in this version – I don’t know if they realized that Sophia Bush would sell better than Zachary Knighton (whose real name I never remember but I just finished watching all of Happy Endings again so I couldn’t help but think of him as Dave Rose) or what, but the character in this one gets an upgrade to girlfriend and road trip companion.

I saw Michael Bay’s remake of this movie a while back (more on that one tomorrow) and didn’t even realize it was a remake until recently so I figured I’d give the original a try. With C. Thomas Howell (as Jim) and Rutger Hauer (as the hitcher) I figured it couldn’t be all bad. And it wasn’t!

There were some interesting choices made in the remake that make more sense now that I’ve seen both films, but I really like both of them. I think I like them in slightly different ways, though. In this one, it’s because Rutger Hauer is a total creeper and C. Thomas Howell is so believably distraught that the whole movie was really compelling.

This movie was just okay. I just saw William Sadler in something else (don’t remember what offhand) and when I saw that he was in this, I figured I’d give it a try. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of this movie until yesterday. I think I was looking around IMDb at other movies and this popped up under one of those “you might also enjoy” headers.

And I guess I enjoyed it. I mean, it was passably entertaining. And reasonably scary. Babyface is a scary killer and some of the torture scenes were definitely terrifying. And the plot was pretty interesting, though I can’t really call it an original.

I really like this one. I remember talking about this one with my friend Art who also really likes this one. It’s the first thing I ever saw AJ Bowen in (whose name I can never match with the face at first), and the first thing I ever saw Sharni Vinson in. And Sharni Vinson is awesome in this movie. She kicks some serious ass.

She kicks so much ass, in fact, that the first time I watched this movie I looked her up and immediately watched as many of her movies as possible. Okay, really I only watched Patrick, which is awesome and also has Charles Dance in it, but that’s a story for another night.

I liked this movie, but it annoyed me too much to rate it any higher than 3 out of 5. For one thing, the opening credits are way over the top. Before anything even happens, you’re listening to this crazy upbeat action movie type of song and the credits are rolling across the screen in giant colorful blocks. It’s weird, and way longer than it needs to be.

The story is somewhat original, but the characters are so boring. I never quite care about the characters enough to be invested in their survival, which makes it hard for me to really like this movie. Overall it’s kind of like a less entertaining version of The Strangers.

I don’t have too much to say about this one. It was mostly okay. Nothing really special.

The cast was pretty good – I like Jena Malone and Shawn Ashmore, and I’m pretty sure I like Jonathan Tucker. I thought that Joe Anderson’s fake German accent was a bit much, though. They couldn’t have found an actual German actor to play Mathias?

I figured this was going to be a weird movie, and I was certain of it when, relatively early on in the film, Jody (Brittany Murphy) sat on her bed and asked her father (Michael Biehn), with a straight face, “are you disappointed that I’m still a virgin?” I guess the tagline of “Lose your innocence…or lose your life” should have tipped me off earlier.

So yes, it’s weird, but it’s not bad. It’s got a great cast – Brittany Murphy, Jay Mohr, and Michael Biehn, plus Jesse Bradford for a (very) brief cameo. So the acting is good and the group chemistry is there, but the characters get increasingly stupider and it becomes more and more difficult to relate to them.

As I mentioned yesterday, this movie was kind of boring. Now that I’ve seen the original, I understand some of the choices that were made for this remake…and I still think it’s kind of boring. I guess that’s what you get when the director of Blank Check (yes, that Blank Check) decides to do a PG-13 remake of a John Carpenter film.

But it wasn’t the worst movie I’ve watched. The acting was fine, and they definitely went for gold in the music department – the composer, Graeme Revell, did the music for several movies I really liked (Gossip, The Craft, Idle Hands) and one movie I’ve named as my favorite on more than one occasion, The Saint. And he does a great job in this one! The music was the least boring part about the movie.

So I apparently made a mistake watching the remake of this one before watching this one. More on that remake tomorrow, but basically I found it so boring that I never bothered to watch the original. I guess I figured there was no way that a movie from 1980 was going to be that much better than its remake.

I should have given John Carpenter the benefit of the doubt, of course. This one was pretty good. Not like The Thing good, but good. And while I think the remake suffers from taking itself too seriously, this one doesn’t have the same problem. John Carpenter knows exactly how seriously to take his movies, but no further.

When this came out, I remember worrying that it was going to be a disappointment or that it was going to sully the original’s good name. And then I saw that Rose Byrne was in it, and I got a little more excited. And the good news is I wasn’t disappointed at all!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not quite as good as the original. This one came out in the midst of Hollywood’s zombie zealotry and has the production value to prove it. It’s definitely geared more towards flash than fright, though it has its moments. I don’t want to spoil too much but I’ll just say that the last scene with the parents together is killer (ha ha ha) and one of the scariest moments of the film.