#the alchemist cookbook (2016)

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: An isolated man lands in hot water when he summons an ancient demon in the backwoods of Grand Rapids, Mich.

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)

You don’t need a big budget to make a good movie. Sometimes, having too much money can even be a hindrance. All you need are good performances and a compelling story. Sometimes, even just one of those is enough if you’ve got a novel idea. Unfortunately for The Alchemist Cookbook, all of its unconventional choices don't make up for how dreadfully boring it is.

Sean (Ty Hickson) lives in a cabin in the woods with his cat and spends his days trying to use an old alchemy book. After his medication runs out and his friend, Cortez (Amari Cheatom), refuses to make the three-hour trip required to bring them to him, Sean becomes increasingly deranged. Eventually, he sets out to summon a demon.

I wish I could find a philosopher’s stone and turn all of this movie’s boring to excitement. With only two people in the entire film and the plot being set either inside Sean’s cabin or in the wilderness immediately around it, the actors get plenty of time to shine and to the film’s credit, they’re up to the task. Some of the dialogue feels like it’s being improvised on the spot, with many four-letter words being added over and over to pad out the sentences but you believe Ty Hickson as someone who really needs his meds. Beyond this, there is little to praise in The Alchemist Cookbook.

The film lasts 82 minutes and it feels like forever. So much of the movie is spent watching Sean mucking about, drawing prisoner marks on the barks of a tree to count the days, listening to music on his cassette player, playing with Christmas lights or mixing colored liquids to no effect that you perk up the second his buddy shows up. “Finally! Something new!” When the two start arguing about how delicious the cat food Cortez has brought might be, your heart sinks. Yup. This is what the entire movie is going to be like. A whole lot of inane conversations and nothing else.

If at any point you're able to shake yourself out of the sleepy aura that radiates out of this story, you might find some of it unsettling or even a little scary. When Sean begins digging into the demonic stuff, we see so little of whatever creature it is that’s making those odd noises in the distance that your imagination fills in the gaps and makes it frightening. At least in theory. In actuality, by the time it happens, it’s so late in the game you’ve given up. You know this movie doesn’t have the budget to show us anything cool and it has no desire to either. It’s not even that the whole thing is shot in a “found footage” fashion that would make this choice legitimate; it’s just that while you can tell that writer/director Joel Potrykus has the skills needed to make a good movie, he didn’t this time.

I try not to look at other people’s reviews when I write my own. All I know is that once in a while, RottenTomatoes publishes articles about how “Rotten Tomatoes was Wrong” about a movie. The Alchemist Cookbook is far too small to ever be featured but I wish it would be. Only someone who has seen so many movies that they’re desperate for something different - doesn’t matter if it’s good or interesting, as long as it’s different - could recommend The Alchemist Cookbook. I say there can’t be many horror movies about summoning demons that feature an all-black cast and no female actors whatsoever but there’s got to be one you’ll find more interesting than this one. (November 13, 2022)

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

It's really bad.

It's trying to be Evil Dead without a plot and there is no definite driving direction of the story. As far as I can tell it's a manic depressive schizophrenic hallucinating in a camper in the woods and inexplicably transforming(?) Or maybe it's all just a delusional breakdown and he only thinks he's transforming?

But what's he doing there originally? I guess he's supposed to be making gold out of lead, or cooking meth for his friend Cortez? but for some reason this "alchemist" is summoning demons?

Which the two are not the same thing. You don't summon demons with alchemy. You wouldn't find an alchemist manual with spells and incantations.

The writer director maybe didn't research it or used creative license to make it about what he wanted regardless.

It feels less put-together than a crappy student film.

For 1hr 23mins it took me a week to finish because it was so slow and boring.

The "Bite Sized Halloween" short films on Hulu are better plotted and storied in 6 minutes or less than this was in 1hr23mins.

[wehavesuchsightstoshowyou]

The Alchemist Cookbook / 2016 / US / d. Joel Potrykus

[cipheramnesia]

I seem to remember you mentioning that Event Horizon didn't do much for you. Are there any cosmic horror movies you do like? I'm trying to broaden my horror palate and I've seen very little of this subgenre.

It depends if you mean cosmic horror as in horror that takes place not on Earth, horror with a science fictional element, or horror about encountering something beyond a human ability to understand. Like, to my mind Event Horizon is the first one, because it's pretty much just a basic horror movie but in space. But cosmic horror is less common because it's rare for any filmmaker to attempt to convey the idea of something incomprehensible.

Anyway, not to start with the obvious, but Alien (1979). It's a classic for a good reason and stands the test of time. It's a group of artists who handed in some of their best work of all time in a single movie. On the off chance you haven't heard of it - fantastic. It's the yardstick of all science fiction horror.

Annihilation is a recent example of what I'd call cosmic horror. For all purposes it's about an alien world trying to understand and adapt to Earth, a fully alien environment seeking to understand the world through adaptation.

I would also say Arrival, while not horror per se, is a fantastic movie that presents humanity encountering something alien and beyond understanding. It's easily one of the best alien contact stories told.

The Color Out of Space (Die Farbe) from 2010 is a German adaptation of an HP Lovecraft story, which is about as traditional as cosmic horror gets. I think this may be Lovecraft's most adapted work, but this version truly gets it and uses the medium of film to tell the story in a unique way. There's a more recent Nicholas Cage adaptation which is alright if you want to swap "beyond understanding" out for "body horror and fractals." Fine and all but not precisely cosmic imho.

In the same range, I think Stalker (an adaptation of Roadside Picnic) is one of the most disturbing cosmic horror movies ever made. Your mileage may vary because it is also very much just some guys walking around in fields, but I found it filled with dread and terror and the oppressive sense of something beyond my understanding at all corners.

In a more modern and easier to watch tangent, Daniel Isn't Real is a complex and very well thought out film, a personal favorite movie that also completely upend the "mental illness is the monster" trope.

Somewhere in between Stalker and Annihilation and Arrival is Under the Skin, a slow and meditative movie about an alien on Earth. Sort of an inverted and horrific version of The Man Who Fell To Earth.

You may also find The Alchemist Cookbook of particular interest, and I personally think Blair Witch from 2016 is a very interesting cosmic horror style movie, along with (sigh) Grave Encounters 2. No, but really, it's weirdly complex. Not good precisely but interesting.

In more general outer space horror, if you want something that has the feel and aesthetic of Event Horizon, I recently watched Pandorum which is less "ooh isn't hell scary" and much more "what if a colony ship went mad and devolved into a group of survivors and cannibal monsters fighting for survival." It's a good action movie with delicious horror touches.

It's also been awhile but my recollection is that Sunshine was quite excellent. And while we're on the subject, the Russian movie Sputnik is wondrously disturbing. And if you want something truly bonkers consider Life Force. It's uh... something.

Anyway, I'm certain I'm missing some other ones, I have a nagging feeling something important slipped my mind but this ought to be a start.

[jackrussle]

The Alchemist Cookbook 2016, dir. Joel Potrykus

[soraskyecinema]

The Alchemist Cookbook // Joel Potrykus // 2016

& my favorite review of it on Shudder

[fernscare]

happy second birthday toni!! and fern, have a very good valentines day, and do share what horror movie is your favorite?

Thank you so much, I'll pass on the well wishes to her!!

Probably the Blair Witch Project because I love trees and campfires! This is probably way more info than you wanted, but here are the doodles that directly preceded those color self-portraits, where I just wanted to list out my favorite horror movies :')

[ID: pencil doodles of a person thinking lovingly about a series of movies, with an icon representing each move. Movies listed are The Blair Witch Project (1999), Ravenous (1999), Lake Mungo (2008), Ganja and Hess (1973), Ghostwatch (1992), Saint Maud (2019), The Wicker Man (1973), Near Dark (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), The Alchemist Cookbook (2016), and The Babadook (2014).]

[foxingpeculiar]

Since the only movie I'm watching tonight is 200 Cigarettes, I've got my list of movies I watched for the first time this year. It's a little low (158 instead of the usual +/- 200) but... well, it's been a year.

Property is No Longer a Theft (1973, Ello Petri)

Zola (2021, Janicza Bravo)

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021, Michael Showalter)

A Face in the Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan)

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021, William Eubank)

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015, Gregory Plotkin)

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014, Christopher Landon)

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012, Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost)

The Nun (2018, Corin Hardy)

Hell-Bound Train (1930, Eloyce & James Gist)

Family Plot (1976, Alfred Hitchcock)

The Witch of King’s Cross (2020, Sonia Bible)

Teknolust (2002, Lynn Hershman Leeson)

Giant (1956, George Stevens)

Castle in the Sky (1986, Hayao Miyazaki)

Messiah of Evil (1973, Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz)

House (1986, Steve Miner)

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014, Adam Robitel)

A Woman is a Woman (1961, Jean-Luc Godard)

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021, Kier-La Janisse)

The Tragedy of MacBeth (2021, Joel Coen)

The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021, Wes Anderson)

Last Night in Soho (2021, Edgar Wright)

Thelma (2017, Joachim Trier)

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, Alfred Hitchcock)

Pig (2021, Michael Sarnoski)

In the Earth (2021, Ben Wheatley)

Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation (2021, Lisa Immordino Vreeland)

9 (2009, Shane Acker)

Chimes at Midnight (1966, Orson Welles)

WeWork, or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (2021, Jed Rothstein)

Enemies of the State (2020, Sonia Kennebeck)

A Glitch in the Matrix (2021, Rodney Ascher)

Citizenfour (2014, Laura Poitras)

The Cremator (1969, Juraj Herz)

Angst (1983, Gerard Kargl)

Death on the Nile (1978, John Guillerman)

The Power of the Dog (2021, Jane Campion)

Nightmare Alley (2021, Guillermo Del Toro)

Mirror (1974, Andrei Tarkovsky)

House of Gucci (2021, Ridley Scott)

Free Guy (2021, Shawn Levy)

A Letter to Three Wives (1949, Joseph L Mankiewicz)

Say Amen Somebody (1982, George T Nierenberg)

Poison Ivy (1992, Katt Shea)

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy)

Zatoichi (2003, Takeshi Kitano)

Pale Flower (1964, Masahiro Shinoda)

Nobody (2021, Ilya Naishuller)

A Time to Kill (1996, Joel Schumacher)

Murder by Numbers (2002, Barbet Schroeder)

Antlers (2021, Scott Cooper)

Drive My Car (2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Ready Player One (2018, Steven Spielberg)

Superman II (1980, Richard Lester)

West Side Story (2021, Steven Spielberg)

Licorice Pizza (2021, Paul Thomas Anderson)

The Batman (2022, Matt Reeves)

You Can’t Kill Meme (2021, Hayley Garrigus)

Being the Ricardos (2021, Aaron Sorkin)

Summer of Soul (2021, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson)

Talk to Me (2007, Kasi Lemmons)

The Night House (2021, David Bruckner)

Here Comes the Devil (2012, Adrián Garcia Bogliano)

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010, Paul W.S. Anderson)

The Ritual (2017, David Bruckner)

The Bye Bye Man (2017, Stacy Title)

Creep (2014, Patrick Brice)

From Within (2008, Phedon Papamichael)

X (2022, Ti West)

Moonfall (2022, Roland Emmerich)

Dead Man (1995, Jim Jarmusch)

The Purge (2013, James DeMonaco)

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020, Danny Wolf)

Caligula (1979, Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione & Giancarlo Lui)

Merrily We Go to Hell (1932, Dorothy Arzner)

The Alchemist Cookbook (2016, Joel Potrykus)

Spoor (2017, Agnieszka Holland)

Cliffhanger (1993, Renny Harlin)

Runaway Jury (2003, Gary Fleder)

A Scanner Darkly (2006, Richard Linklater)

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954, Hiroshi Inagaki)

Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955, Hiroshi Inagaki)

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956, Hiroshi Inagaki)

Mikey and Nicky (1976, Elaine May)

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022, Akiva Schaffer)

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)

Men (2022, Alex Garland)

Old (2021, M. Night Shyamalan)

Saint Maud (2019, Rose Glass)

Bernie (2011, Richard Linklater)

Pineapple Express (2008, David Gordon Green)

Voyeur (2021, Myles Kane & Josh Koury)

Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985, Alan Metter)

Conspiracy Theory (1997, Richard Donner)

Experiment in Terror (1962, Blake Edwards)

The Nightingale (2018, Jennifer Kent)

Leave Her to Heaven (1945, John M. Stahl)

Black Widow (1954, Nunnally Johnson)

The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022, Loren Bouchard & Bernard Derriman)

Incantation (2022, Kevin Ko)

All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989, Don Bluth)

Nope (2022, Jordan Peele)

House of Bamboo (1956, Samuel Fuller)

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)

The Black Phone (2022, Scott Derrickson)

The Presidio (1988, Peter Hyams)

Barbarian (2022, Zach Creeger)

Elvis (2022, Baz Luhrmann)

Vengeance (2022, BJ Novak)

Crimes of the Future (2022, David Cronenberg)

Don’t Worry Darling (2022, Olivia Wilde)

Band of Outsiders (1964, Jean-Luc Godard)

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982, Amy Holden Jones)

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022, Halina Reijn)

Dead and Buried (1981, Gary Sherman)

Blonde (2022, Andrew Dominik)

Phantasm II (1988, Don Coscarelli)

Hellraiser (2022, David Bruckner)

The Keep (1983, Michael Mann)

Next of Kin (1982, Tony Williams)

The Funhouse (1981, Tobe Hooper)

Dream Demon (1988, Harley Cokeliss)

The Hidden (1987, Jack Sholder)

Prince of Darkness (1987, John Carpenter)

White of the Eye (1987, Donald Cammell)

Halloween (2018, David Gordon Green)

Halloween Kills (2021, David Gordon Green)

Halloween Ends (2022, David Gordon Green)

Terror Train (1980, Roger Spottiswoode)

The House by the Cemetery (1981, Lucino Fulci)

Strange Behavior (1981, Michael Laughlin)

Road Games (1981, Richard Franklin)

Final Destination (2000, James Wong)

Daughters of Darkness (1971, Harry Kümel)

Matango (1963, Ishiro Honda)

Thirst (2009, Park Chan-Wook)

Wolfen (1981, Michael Wadleigh)

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)

Hud (1963, Martin Ritt)

The Dark Corner (1946, Henry Hathaway)

Encino Man (1992, Les Mayfield)

The Good Nurse (2022, Tobias Lindholm)

Son in Law (1993, Steve Rash)

Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1978, Ulrike Ottinger)

Henri-Georges Cluzot’s “Inferno” (2009, Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea)

The Blue Dahlia (1946, George Marshall)

Pearl (2022, Ti West)

Amsterdam (2022, David O. Russell)

Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-ho)

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, Rian Johnson)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022, Martin McDonagh)

Song of the Thin Man (1947, Edward Buzzell)

Shadow of the Thin Man (1941, W.S. Van Dyke)

RRR (2022, S.S. Rajamouli)

Another Thin Man (1939, W.S. Van Dyke)

Saaho (2019, Sujeeth)

Triangle of Sadness (2022, Ruben Östlund)

[zeig-dich666]

Horror 🎥🦇🎥🦇 Metal 🤘🏻🎵🤘🏻🎵 Wine 🍷🍾🍷🍾 Repeat 📽🤘🏻🍷🍾 The Alchemist Cookbook (2016) The Alchemist Cookbook is a horror film directed by Joel Potrykus. The film was released on the 7th of October 2016 in New York City. The film stars Ty Hickson as "Sean" and Amari Cheatom as "Cortez". The film was produced by Oscilloscope Laboratories and by producers Andrew D. Corkin, Bryan Reisberg and Ashley Young. "Sean" is an outcast who isolates himself from society to practice alchemy, accompanied by only his cat. As his mental condition deteriorates the line of what is real and what is not becomes blurred, and as his chemistry turns to black magic, he instead summons a demon. The film breaks the conventional boundaries of genre, as elements of a black comedy, horror and a psychological thriller are all incorporated and intertwined. #horrormovies #horror #halloween #horrorfan #horrormovie #horrorfilm #horrorcommunity #horroraddict #scary #movies #horrorart #horrorfilms #horrorjunkie #horrorcollector #movie #instahorror #metalhead #film #wine #horrorlover #horrorfanatic #creepy #michaelmyers #art #horrorgram #horrornerd #slasher #spooky (at Charlotte, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWe-40RMWLc/?utm_medium=tumblr

[local-boob]

spooky season movie list

Halloween (1978) - dir. John Carpenter; star. Jamie Lee Curtis

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - dir. Wes Craven; star. Johnny Depp

Children of the Corn (1984) – based on the short story by Stephen King

House (1986)

Escape from New York (1981) / Escape from L.A. (1996) double feature – dir. John Carpenter; feat. Kurt Russell

Misery (1990) – star. Cathy Bates, James Caan; based on the 1987 horror novel by Stephen King

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – dir. Guillermo del Toro

Death Proof (2007) - star. Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Zoe Bell, Kurt Russell; dir. Quentin Tarantino

Let the Right One In (2008) / Border (2018) double feature; both based on works by John Ajvide Lindqvist

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) – star. Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller; based on the 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver

Upstream Color (2013)

Green Room (2015) – star. Anton Yelchin, Patrick Stewart, Alia Shawkat

The VVitch (2015) - star. Anya Taylor-Joy; dir. Robert Eggers

The Devil’s Candy (2015)

The Alchemist’s Cookbook (2016)

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – star. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman

The Bad Batch (2016) – star. Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves; dir. Ana Lily Amirpour

Raw (2016) - French language (takeaway: “don’t make a vegetarian eat meat”)

The Eyes of My Mother (2016)

Laissez bronzer les cadavres (“Let the Corpses Tan”) (2017)

The Killing of the Sacred Deer (2017) – dir. Yorgos Lanthimos; feat. Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan

The Neon Demon (2016) star. Elle Fanning / Braid (2018)

Suspiria (1977) / Suspiria (2018) optional double feature

Mother! (2017)

Get Out (2017) / Us (2019) double feature – dir. Jordan Peele

Mandy (2018) - dir. Panos Cosmatos; prod. Elijah Wood; star. Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough

Climax (2018, en français)

Hereditary (2018) / Midsommar (2019) double feature – dir. Ari Aster

The Lodge (2019)

The Lighthouse (2019) - star. Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe; dir. Robert Eggers

Saint Maud (2019)

Antebellum (2020) – star. Janelle Monae

[doormouseetcappendix]

best dramas of 2016

endless poetry directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky 

the alchemists cookbook directed by Joel Potrykus

moonlight directed by Barry Jenkins 

buster’s mal heart directed by Sarah Adina Smith 

toni erdmaan directed by Marene Ade 

a dragon arrives directed by Mani Haghighi

salt and fire directed by Werner Herzog

silence directed by Martin Scorcesse 

fences directed by Denzel Washington 

patterson directed by Jim Jarmusch 

[defconprime]

TREKMATCH! # 238 - DS9's "Extreme Measures" vs 2016's Buzzard

BUZZARD

A midwestern metalhead underachiever working a temp job at a bank works out a big scam to steal $90 in checks from work. The director, who also made the Alchemist Cookbook, is really adept at capturing a certain style of desperate nobody - plus he currently teaches at Grand Valley State University, where I also briefly taught! This one is a little less depressing than The Alchemist Cookbook, but it's in the top two of movies where somebody combines a Nintendo Power Glove with Freddy Krueger claws that's for sure.

GRADE: B-

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - "Extreme Measures"

It's in the final ten-hour arc of DS9, so everything is very wild as you can imagine, including Odo and his whole species dying of a plague Section 31 introduced. Ah, remember the days when Section 31 was a DS9 only subplot? Anyway, Miles and Julian lure Sloan, the Section 31 contact who tried to recruit Julian, to DS9 in order to steal the cure from his brain, but then Sloan kills himself gasp! Luckily Bashir and O'Brien can still go into Sloan's weird dying brain for like thirty minutes to grab that info real quick to save Odo.

GRADE: B+

Victory to Trek, putting Trek up 122-116!

[dakotadanger]

Marty Jackitansky is your average con man, a petty criminal, modern crook. He abuses brand promotions for cash and free product. He steals office supplies from his work. When a check fraud scheme goes bad, he starts living in a co-worker’s basement and becomes increasingly paranoid.

The central character in Buzzard (2014) is not Danny Ocean, he’s a lazy guy who’s boyish and bored. He modifies his busted power glove with knives like Freddie Krueger. The most humanizing moments come from the stupid disagreements and competitions between Marty and his “work friend” Derek.

Director Joel Potrykus (The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)) stages these great single-shot scenes where the camera never moves. Everything in the frame becomes slightly over-familiar and you experience the mundanity of the protagonist’s life. It makes the character feel more like a real person, and I’m certain there are plenty of Marty Jackitansky’s out in the world.

[1day1movie]

The Alchemist Cookbook (2016) Joel Potrykus.

[child-of-damage]

I just watched The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)