Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

This was one of the first movies I remember truly scaring me. “Nightmare” is right – Freddy Krueger haunted my dreams for months every time I’d watch it. And I’d watch it often, because it was also one of the first movies that made me realize…I love being scared.

Wes Craven truly understood how to scare his audience. Every aspect of the movie works in concert to evoke the most fear possible… the background music is perfect (that nursery rhyme sticks in your head in just the worst way), the sound effects are chilling (those “finger-knives” scraping across metal get me every time), and the pacing keeps you at the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

This was another one that wasn’t a bad movie, but wasn’t a good movie either. It started off strong — Ashley Rickards can act, and it definitely had the creepy factor going for it (Michael Massee really helps set that scene…he is always creepy).

Unfortunately, about twenty minutes in the plot holes start to add up and are never quite filled. It’s like they were trying to do too many things in one film, and didn’t excel at any of them.

I have no strong feelings about this movie, in any direction. It wasn’t bad, but…it wasn’t great, either. There just wasn’t anything special about it.

I really wanted to like this movie. The actors are relatively well known and well respected, the concept and story seemed to be good, and the trailer was incredibly promising. Unfortunately…it was a really hard movie to watch, and it completely fell short of all my expectations.

The Babadook was all I heard about in horror movies for months last year, and worried it wouldn’t live up to its hype, I decided not to watch it until that hype had died down somewhat.

Well, I finally watched it! And I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movie started out strong and stayed strong throughout.

I liked this movie more than I should probably admit. I haven’t found too many Australian horror films that I can get into, but this one was engaging from the beginning and didn’t let up throughout. Sure, it’s your average “I’d like to play a game”-type slasher film, but it’s above average in two ways: the acting, and the music.

I thought I’d start my 366 days of horror with a movie about New Year’s Eve…and the dangers of social media.

Okay, so it’s mostly about the latter and only minimally about the former, but it’s great. Take several young, relatively unknown actors with a decent amount of talent and working chemistry, add in a virus that turns its infected into raving murderers and is spread by…well, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

There are some neat effects, particularly when you start seeing what the infected see, and a great scene with a string of Christmas lights.