Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

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.

I’m a little less tired today (mostly because I did nothing all day), but I still wanted to watch something good. It’s rare that I see a scary movie on Netflix rated anything above 3 stars, but this one had 4 so I figured I’d give it a try.

Would it be too cliche of me to say that it starts less with a bang than with a whimper? This is my 100th review, so I figure I’m allowed to be a little cliched. Anyway, I can see why it was well rated.

I’m really tired today, so I’m happy to say that this one is mostly an improvement on the original. I’ll keep this short.

This version focuses more on the story and on character development than on exploitation. There are still some disturbing scenes, but this one has an R rating, so it’s not nearly as graphic.

This movie is hard to watch. Not in the normal, almost tongue-in-cheek way I usually say it. There’s nothing wrong with this movie, but the things it depicts…well, there’s a lot wrong there. There’s no need for fancy special effects here, and while there’s not a whole lot of gore, there are several graphic, disturbing scenes.

For a directorial debut, this was quite a statement. If Wes Craven was here for anything, it was to scare as many people as possible.