Scary Stories (from a Dark Allie)

Netflix told me that I’d be interested in this one and I figured it was worth a watch, especially since I like Jessica Alba and Thomas Jane.

The good news? In this case, Netflix was right. This movie was well acted and well paced…and incredibly creepy. There were a few jump scares, but the film didn’t rely on them to set the mood. The background music was understated throughout and worked nicely to add to that mood.

This movie was mostly okay, but I have never wanted a “protagonist” to die as much as Ryan. Seriously. From the start, I wanted to rip the camera out of his hands and give it to anyone else. His “colorful” commentary and stereotypical bullying made him one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve ever seen.

The rest of the relatively unknown actors in the cast were okay. They worked well together and the dialogue was mostly believable. And there are definitely some creepy moments to the film.

Overall this movie wasn’t bad. Jason Patric was fine as Cooper, though he mostly sat around and grunted. Louisa Krause was also fine as Streak. There were some really creepy scenes throughout the movie, and the setting in general was awesome (giant old abandoned apartment complex? I’ll take it!).

But something about the twist at the end didn’t quite land for me. It was an interesting twist, but there wasn’t enough backstory or foreshadowing for it to make much sense. I felt more confused than scared at the end of the movie.

I was waffling between rating this a 2 or a 3 out of 5, but I think what made my decision for me was one female character’s (seemingly out of place and in poor taste) use of “don’t be gay” as a retort. Seriously? I’m realizing now that it’s been years (and more than the four since this was released) since I’ve heard that used as an insult.

The dialogue was otherwise mostly okay, and the acting wasn’t bad, but the pacing seemed way off and there were times that the background music was so loud I couldn’t hear what the characters were saying.

This movie wasn’t bad. I like scary movies about babysitting partly because I used to babysit and partly because they generally aren’t about people making terrible choices when faced with some terrifying antagonist.

This is mostly true of Angie the babysitter here, and Sarah Thompson delivers the role nicely. The supporting cast is full of good actors who also deliver here, including the young Kai Caster as Sam. 

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood today, but this did not hold my attention at all. The acting was fine, the background music wasn’t bad, and there was lots of blood and gore, but…I found myself bored through most of the movie.

I like Thora Birch usually. The Hole was a great movie because of her (and despite her terrible British accent). But as a member of an internationally recognized wrestling team? I just don’t buy it. At least they didn’t have Gloria Vostis make highly suspect small talk about her wrestling matches – I think that would have taken me out of the movie completely.

I watched this for the first time tonight and found myself mostly unimpressed. I imagine that it would have given me nightmares had I seen it when I was much younger, but the scary scenes were limited and overshadowed by the echoing audio effects, and the weird pacing and awkward jump cuts made it a bit hard to follow.

It felt very much like an 80’s horror movie that didn’t quite hold up through the years. That said, although I haven’t read any Clive Barker (I’ve mostly stuck with Stephen King and Christopher Pike, with some R. L. Stine thrown in for good measure), this story intrigued me enough to want to read his original novella and look into his other works.

Somehow I never saw this when it came out, so maybe it’s just nostalgia here (those AOL Instant Messenger sounds take me way back, and I’d almost forgotten about Bon Jovi’s acting years) but I loved this movie. I was skeptical about a PG-13 horror movie, but this one delivers and proves that you can craft a good scary story without relying on swearing and gore.

I was happy about the Gary Cole cameo, but sad about the terrible Gary Cole British accent. Was it too expensive to find a real British actor to play Owen’s father? He was only in 30 seconds or so of the film. Despite that, the rest of the cast is wholly believable (okay, aside from Paul James’ hair) and has a chemistry that is, at least as far as most of these movies have shown me, hard to find.

This is another one of those teen slasher films that doesn’t have anything going for it except a relatively familiar cast. “Wait,” you might be thinking, “doesn’t Paris Hilton give this one something special?"*

No. No, she doesn’t. In fact, I probably would have rated this one higher if Paris Hilton hadn’t been involved. She’s the only one of the group who can’t act (seriously, even her screams aren’t believable), and I found myself distracted by hoping she’d just die already.

I was kind of hoping this movie would be terrible so I could make an equally terrible joke about the anguish I felt getting through it, but I liked it too much for that. It was a bit slow paced, and not as terrifying as it could have been, but it was interesting.

I was especially impressed with the minimalism of the background music and how simple the camera work was. It’s a great example of “less is more.”