garbagegrimoire

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 22, The Unborn

I’m always going to want to like a movie that tries to root itself in folklore and esoteric philosophy. & this one came close to being something I’d like but not quite.

It’s one thing to explore more widely shared folk stories but I think where it started to feel a little weird is when it brought up esoteric books that were unfamiliar enough that the Rabbi character was even unfamliar. A quick search only turns up Hebrew versions of the book available on uncommon, religious-based websites.

As someone who studies the occult, this is a red flag because there are large swaths of Kaballistic mysticism & Jewish philosophy translated into various languages & available to the uninitiated reader. In my experience, something that is not widely translated & distributed is closed to the uninitiated. & much of what we can read & study is not simply open to practice, interpretation, or available to be editorialized or played with.

I guess I couldn’t get past that. The way they build the lore into the plot is interesting but hinges a lot on twins being particularly significant regarding possession & this particular book & the way it is explained seemed a bit flimsy which is what prompted me to google the book.

Beyond that, the film stylistically seemed to be leaning pretty hard on visual effects typical of an early 00s Japanese horror movie. & I get it, imitate your heroes to find your own voice, but paired with the mysticism element it came off very Crowley-esque -- just pull in “weird” stuff from various cultures & white-wash it so it can be gawked at & consumed by a mainstream western audience.

Back to the plot, I want to know the logic behind our dude chilling tf out as soon as the girl says the same thing she’s been saying with the right amount of nice or whatever. But when you had Rabbi shouting it in Hebrew & buddy priest doing his own Episcopalian thing over there our dude was perfectly fine & strong af.

I mean if it was some sort of fetal development point -- which would make a certain amount of sense with the plot -- cool, but there was really not even a hint at that. & anyway we’re talking about a series of minutes, not days.

Admittedly, I may be erring a little too far on the side of caution based on the knowledge I’ve picked up studying the occult. I try to be as respectful as possible of various traditions & practitioners as a rule.

But overall, the movie just wasn’t that enjoyable for me.

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

St. Maud

It Follows

Mortal

Pure

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

The Unborn

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Black Island

Feral

Demon House

All that we destroy

The Devil Below

It Came from the Desert

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 21, All that we destroy

This movie was so bad it broke my stride. & while I continued drawing for the rest of this week, I just couldn’t find the time or energy to photograph & write & compile everything.

& because of all that, here I am on the fifth day of November, slowly catching up on the last 2 weeks of October.

I did take a loose approach to this movie as a prompt & ended up drawing a weird dream spider/duck/human thing I dreamed of once. I felt like this was completely fair because I fell asleep on three different occasions trying to get through this.

The first time I fell asleep I was in bed, which fair enough, that’s on me for being overscheduled & trying to binge a bunch of shitty movies as part of this challenge.

The second time, I was in the living room recliner and had been knitting to keep myself awake until my hands got sore. As soon as I put the needles down I fell asleep.

The third time I was sitting upright at my computer desk trying to take notes. No notes were actually taken.

I am only human. The pacing in this movie is off & the story was not for me. & the big problem was that this was one of about half of the movies I watched in October that fell that way.

& this movie was uniquely hard to pay attention to because there were zero likable characters -- the fucked up mom, the overly peppy neighbor (who didn’t deserve to be murdled obviously), the legit serial killer incel boy, & the victim who was cloned so many times we had no way of actually getting to know who she was.

While Great Value Ted Bundy Jr. is a fucking septic tank encased in human flesh, everyone actually sucks here & they suck in a way that didn’t even piss me off. It felt obvious that I liked nobody & had no stake in the story.

So, the movie was not for me by any means but it helped me catch up on my sleep so I’m not big mad I guess.

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

St. Maud

It Follows

Mortal

Pure

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Black Island

Feral

Demon House

All that we destroy

The Devil Below

It Came from the Desert

[garbagegrimoire]

pause

Last week was a low point in the challenge. I barely finished all the movies & ended up falling way behind in reviews & sketches because I was mind-numbingly bored with the whole process.

To finish the next movie on the list, “All that We Destroy,” I had to make three attempts (I fell asleep twice) & take an entire evening off to marathon movies that did not suck or put me to sleep to remind myself that I really do love the genre. My reset included: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), A Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Hounds of Baskervilles (1939), & Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

The hard reset worked & I’m entirely through this month’s list (the final week’s movies were overall really good) but not caught up with all of my drawings & text reviews & may not start posting again for another day or two.

But since I’m done, here’s my final list (the upcoming reviews/sketches are italicized):

Dollman

Jennifer’s Body

Basket Case

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

St. Maud

It Follows

The Field Guide to Evil

Mortal

Pure

Teeth

Lake Mungo

Things Seen & Heard

Lords of Salem

Don’t Listen

The Dunwich Horror

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

The Unborn

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Black Island

Feral

Demon House

All That We Destroy

Black Island

The Devil Below

It Came from the Desert

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 20, Black Island

This movie made me mad uncomfortable I’ll give it that.

This is 100% a suspense movie, there’s no supernatural element to it & nothing is hinted at. There is a family mystery that is eventually unveiled but it’s just a crusty ass old rich dude doing regular crusty ass old rich dude shit fucking up everyone’s lives around him. & these are stories I know exist but I can do without.

& that is annoying because I was excited to see a German movie on the list (German is my second language). But tbf, everything I just wrote is just the tip of the fucking iceberg.

& since I’m massively annoyed, I’m about to just spoil it -- so scroll away if that’s a problem.

This fucking movie about a teacher raping her student had the motherfucking audacity for the twist to be that she’s also his aunt & this is weird incest revenge shit.

Goddamn it.

I hate most of the things about this movie & will probably rant a bit on the podcast but I’m going to cap this because there is nothing I have to say isn’t peppered in gratuitous fucks.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

St. Maud

It Follows

Mortal

Pure

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Black Island

Feral

Demon House

The Devil Below

It Came from the Desert

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 19, It Follows

I was very tired when I watched this & incredibly frustrated with multiple attempted sketches so I’m dealing with it.

Overall, this movie was good. It was not particularly scary or particularly enthralling but it was solid & well-paced & played with some interesting ideas.

On the surface it seems like a play on the old horror movie purity culture thing. We all know the rules -- especially where young folks are involved -- if you fuck you’re fucked. So a supernatural STD leans hard into that.

But that’s not how it comes off. The characters are sympathetic, they’re all young & doing their own thing. Even the heartthrob who bangs the sister of a girl who obviously has the feels for him is not quite a bad dude. While he’s a fucking dog, he has empathy -- they’ve all been on this journey together & he’s tired of seeing her scared & hurt, he wants to shoulder some of that & maybe disprove it all & set everything right.

Which of course doesn’t pan out & it feels bad.

So with pretty boy fucked off the old mortal coil, the focus of the curse returns to our main character.

& this was a character that they put work into developing. She’s attached to each of her friends in a unique way, she’s invested in people other than herself & even has a weird detached sense of responsibility toward Great Value Nick Lachey. She even hesitated simply passing it off to someone -- as douchebag mc backstreet hair bitch did to her -- & when she did it was more out of a sense of desperate commiseration than any ill intent.

The next element is where a decision was made in a writer’s room somewhere & it’s equal parts bizarre & genius.

The “It” that follows is not a particularly fast or powerful creature. It will kill you if it gets you but it’s kind of slow & the way it presents itself would likely get less scary over time to someone who was constantly dealing with it. Sure the goddamn grim reaper is on your shoulder but how is it any different from any other person -- so you can see it & you should probably skedaddle when it gets up in your business... And?

The statement overall seems to be more like -- We never know whose out there with ill-intent, ready to sweet talk anyone under the bus. If you could see it would you just throw it to the next guy or grow a pair & deal with it.

This movie focused on creating a character believably supported by a group of characters that chose the second option & that’s what made it an interesting movie overall.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

St. Maud

It Follows

Mortal

Pure

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

The Devil Below

It Came from the Desert

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 18, The Devil Below 2021

This movie was incredibly slow, skipped all story & lore building & played close to archetypes w its main characters allowing for zero interesting deviations or conflicts.

I was more enthralled w reading the wiki page on anthracite -- which is an expensive sort of coal, but only like ×2 expensive. Not exactly sacrifice yourself to guys in bad worm monster costumes to save capitalism expensive.

Really cool premise w an incredibly disappointing delivery.

Current ranking:

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Pure

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

The Devil Below

It Came from the Desert

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of  the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 17, Unfriended

Attempting to watch this on a 40 inch TV made me realize that I need to go back to the optometrist.

What I did catch was interesting enough but man, kids are shitty -- but this shitty? I had some bad friends when I was younger but these kids are another sort of fucked up.

I was uncomfortable that the plot hinged on a suicide ultimately caused by a boo-boo-Bennett-esque tape. But appreciate that they were trying to illustrate possible real life consequences for online bullying (suicide) as well as paint the type of people who would pull that shit as over the top awful (if you'd narc on your intoxicated childhood friend you're def the type of person who would do cagey shit in other relationships).

Tbf, I admire what they were trying to do. & they packed a lot of mystique into a very minimalist format.

I think what really sunk it for me was not being able to read/see everything. It was the equivalent of a movie that was too dark, it felt like work to follow because I'm old & my eyes suck.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Pure

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Unfriended

Come True

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of  the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 16, I Know What You Did Last Summer

This is the first time I watched a movie that was a legit teen slasher movie when I was the target audience (well I was 12 but close enough).

& it was about as I expected -- hokey side characters, weird unrelatable mains (even the reliable one was inconsistent), & a premise that only worked because everyone involved was either an idiot or an asshole.

It didn't make me uncomfy like a lot of slashers do but I did manage to fall asleep more than once & had to back up to continue watching. So, while it wasn't the worst acted or worst written movie on the list, it just wasn't my thing.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Pure

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Come True

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of  the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 15, We Summon The Darkness

I started out with high hopes for this one based on the credits & synopsis -- Power Rangers productions presents METAL!! \m/

& for once, I wasn’t really let down.

However, I immediately hated everyone in the car aside from the blonde (Val) because there is no reason to be a fucking dick about having a weak bladder. I liked that as a character trait for Val because it’s relatable as fuck.

At first it didn’t seem very ‘80s to me but the radio put a quick end to that -- nothing sets the scene for the '80-'90s like the satanic panic horseshit.

But I have to ding them a bit because they used Mercyiful Fate for the music but paid some weird actors without corpse paint to act like they were performing & it was a minor disappointment.

Anyway, with the murders happening in threes & that being the obvious focus of the movie you're immediately wondering which group -- the 3 girls or 3 guys -- are the murderers. & while the awkward ass convo in the parking lot was entirely uninteresting, it was pretty typical of the lot outside of a metal show & a lot of hints were dropped.

My money was on the girls pretty early on because -- of course. & the twist of them being the Christians using the satanic panic to manipulate the public -- & Alexis being Pastor Johnny Knoxville’s daughter -- was nice.

It was really quite predictable & everything laid out like a typical slasher/killer movie. But it had enough of a weirdness -- a lack of gore, & seriousness that blunted everything & didn’t made me viscerally hate the whole damn thing.

Val being caught pissing while the boys are trying to get away is an example of one of many reasons why I'd be an incompetent villain.

Overall, it wasn't a thinker, there was no suspense, nothing was surprising. TBH, it was heavy-handed as fuck & I know this is the junk food equivalent of a horror movie.

& in that it’s like so many others on this list. Yet, unlike the others I am entirely the target audience here & I couldn't help but like it.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

We Summon the Darkness

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Pure

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Come True

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

I feel like I need to reiterate that this list is based on what I personally enjoyed watching vs. what is a good movie. St. Maud, Mortal, The Voyeurs, etc.. all better written stories but I liked We Summon the Darkness better because it’s my type of trash.

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of   the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

Just in case anyone’s wondering on this one -- I drew one of King Diamond’s corpse paint designs because I felt like it was missing from the movie.

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 14, Come True (2021)

This movie has some really interesting storytelling but blatantly commits one of the most annoying horror movie sins.

I know it's about sleep & it’s trying to be dark & liminal & blurry. But if I can't fucking see a single thing on the screen because there isn't enough light, it is incredibly hard for me to pay attention to the movie.

This is something I didn't mention when I talked about Sweeney Todd but that is a great example of a movie that is very dark while still being clear & easy to watch. I feel like there are better ways to make things visibly dreary aside from the dark, blurry, irritating route that this movie -- & several others -- take.

Besides, this movie relies a lot on psychological suspense. The darkness isn't hiding jump scares or bad props but attempting to set a visible tone. & I get it, but in my opinion it takes away from the movie.

As the film wore on (& on, & on) the stylistic choices, the pauses, the music made it seem as if it wanted to be a Panos Cosmotos film. But it lacked the development, the movement, & the sharpness. It was a blunt, bleary, confusing account of a story that struggled to find direction.

& the ending twists did not save it. Instead of everything falling masterfully together, it fizzled & relied on a textual mechanism to explain it all away. This may work in some cases, but here it seemed like a cheap excuse for the lack of cohesion.

Listen, if you want to make an art film about nothing cool, go for it. Even if I don’t like it, I will look for something great in the setting, the acting, the writing, whatever -- but give me something to love & PLEASE edit it ffs.

On top of everything else, the slow pacing was maddening in a movie that stretched at least 15 min longer than contemporary equal disappointments.

My two biggest issues: lack of light is not a valid stylistic choice & is borderline infuriating; & if you're going to drift & not really bother with a cohesive story please for the love of God edit that shit down.

I'm tired.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Pure

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Come True

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 13, Pure (2019)

I used to work for a local publication & for awhile ran what amounted to a community bulletin board. I had to regularly put in announcements for these purity dances, since they were held by local service clubs it was a free advertisement but it seemed creepy & always rubbed me the wrong way.

So I was glad to see that someone had used it as a premise for a horror movie & it was okay. The main cast behaved in a way that was consistent to their characters & the story developed around both a paranormal element & the consistent prodding of the obvious antagonists -- the fathers & pastor.

They did employ some interesting symbolism to hint at where the story was going -- the feathers (angels), the black eyes & black bile (demons).

Overall, the movie was very middle of the road enjoyable much like Mortal, perhaps slightly moreso in my case because it served up a little personal confirmation bias. It was okay & I don’t hate that I watched it but I likely would not bother watching it again.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Pure

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of  the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 12, A Classic Horror Story

At the beginning of this movie I really didn’t like it, by the middle I hated it, but by the end my opinion had changed to okay but fair enough.

As someone who got into the horror genre really young, I have some pretty strong opinions about what types of movies I will bother watching. On the top of my fuck that list are slashers. I am never surprised by a lack of basic compassion in living/breathing human beings & it doesn’t engage or intrigue me when they inflict any sort of twisted harm & suffering on each other. Watching it feels gross & at best irritates the living hell out of me.

I came to this realization when I tried to watch The Strangers with my mom. It hit me all of a sudden -- yes, this is horror & I should technically like it but I’m having an absolutely fucking awful time. I’m not only not surprised at the depravity I’m seeing but there reaction I’m getting internally is a traumatic sense of empathy & a weird feeling of being unmoored in my own body.

I like horror stories with a supernatural element because there is an ability to uncover a legacy, a history that can be unraveled & made sense of in the contemporary day of the plot. When done right there’s this golden epiphany where everything makes sense in a way that cannot happen in reality. & while this movie gave us some supernatural elements pretty early on, I just couldn’t buy into them.

By the time we see the ritual where two of the main cast have their eyes removed I was fucking done. It didn’t feel supernatural, there was no sense of reasoning or unravelling a mystery -- in fact, the story simply didn’t make sense, & instead I felt that same sick sense of empathy over the pain the characters were enduring. Since I was having a bad time with it & I turned the movie off.

I only came back to it the next day because I knew I’d have to talk about it on the podcast & I was determined to finish so I could get it checked off the list.

& it ended in a surprising way that seemed to almost agree with my opinion that the story read like one of those badly written & utterly unenjoyable damage-porn movies.

I’m not going to ruin the ending of this one on here since it’s a 2021 release but let’s just say that the sweetness of the revenge, the feelings it invoked about movies that center entirely around misery voyeurism, & the ambiguous but symbolic final scenes absolutely saved the movie in my eyes.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

A Classic Horror Story

St. Maud

Mortal

Pure

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

&  again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of  the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 11, Sweeney Todd (2007)

I love Sweeney Todd but admittedly this is an outlier among the others substituted in by Jay (thank you) offering a refreshing change of pace from the this only works because everyone involved is knuckledragging levels of stupid device used in most of the other movies on this year’s list.

The story is an antique with compelling motivations & choices for each character. This film version has a particularly good cast -- Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sascha Baron Cohen. Each frame is visually haunting as you would expect from a Tim Burton adaptation. This film version is based on the musical written by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler & the songs stick with you.

I think the general plot is pretty well known. I personally enjoy the bits of class critique thrown in among the obvious motivations of revenge, lust, & love. I really can’t even fault Barker/Todd’s bend on revenge once he realizes that all this was allowed to happen based on the class privileges & unjust power granted to Judge Turpin. His life was completely derailed & his whole family suffered unjustly due to the morally hypocritical corruption & depravity of someone higher in the socioeconomic hierarchy.

I’d say off with all of their heads.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

Sweeney Todd

St. Maud

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

This is a little different than what I came to the table with for this week’s podcast but as I’ve written these reviews out, my opinions have changed slightly. It’s mostly Teeth that has fallen & that’s because when I was writing the list up I was still low-key laughing. Now I’m in the fray of week 3 & growing increasingly annoyed.

& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 10, Feral (2017)

Honestly, I’m tired these recent, entirely non-engaging movies that hinge 100% on the main character operating under some sort of unbalanced stupidity.

Hey so check this out, all sorts of young medical professionals are hanging out in the woods when they encounter a were creature infected with some sort of were virus & oops everyone dies because a doctor can’t kill only cure, lol.

Please stop.

It’s not even that much work to create a compelling flaw in a main character that isn’t absolutely boneheaded. Look at our therapist in Mortal. We’re staged in the beginning of the movie for her to be extra-tenacious with her next patient when she loses someone to suicide & feels responsible.

It’s a tiny thing, setting up a story but I swear it makes all the difference.

As far as this movie is concerned, both of the primary characters have at best confusing but mostly nonsensical motivations.

Since I already mentioned the doctor. I will admit a medical-ethics based refusal to kill is an understandable beginning motivation, esp someone straight outta med school, BUT once your friends start dropping & you've gained zero traction against the spread it starts making a lot less sense.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

St. Maud

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Crawl

Feral

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 9, Teeth (2007)

This was a mediocre movie saved by the corny premise & the occasional hilarious scene.

Before I get started I just want to say: #dickcrab 4 life.

I went into this movie late at night, desperate to finish the week before I had to record the next day & had decided to start in advance by just drawing a flower with teeth because obv I wasn’t going to draw anything too graphic & I knew the crux of the story was vagina dentata.

The story itself is a fairly uninteresting drama created by using batshit Christian purity culture to band-aid a situation that needed extensive (expensive) mental health counseling.

The best scene in the entire movie is hands down #dickcrab. In short, the main character is either too niave or too deep in shock to realize her first "victim" (her rapist) had bled out so she returns to the scene (a cave near a waterfall) to check on the situation only to find a crab scuttling over the bloated dismembered dick.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

St. Maud

Mortal

Teeth

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Crawl

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 8, Crawl (2019)

The rare podcast listener would know that I’m not a huge fan of slasher movies because it’s 100% believable that people are awful, hateful creatures fully capable of doing wicked things. It’s unsettling in a way that is not fun for me. I prefer more paranormal or weird things that are implausible in real life because they’re fun & creative.

So it follows that the movies that center around animals doing not entirely implausible animal things would not be so much fun for me either. & for the most part that’s true.

But that’s not the problem with this movie. The problem with Crawl is the same as The Voyeurs & tbh most horror movies released in the last 20 years -- there are zero functioning adults in the room & every choice made by the characters was absolutely boneheaded. The problem with this is that the plot relies entirely on the stupidity of the people involved to move along.

Star swimmer should not have gone into an evacuation zone for any reason. Her dipshit old-ass dad should not have gone further into a shitty area to “close vents” in an otherwise unoccupied house that was already threatened by flooding. High ground should always be more important than getting a boat that can be thrown around & caught up on debris. These idiots endangered themselves, each other, & plenty of other people being mind-numbingly stupid & that sinks the whole story.

I guess I’m just at a point where I’ve grown really tired of selfish people refusing to do the bare minimum & expecting society to continually bail them when bad shit inevitably happens. I felt worse for the dog & the guy stealing hotdogs than I did for anyone else.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

St. Maud

Mortal

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Crawl

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!

[garbagegrimoire]

#31daysofhorror day 7, St. Maud

St. Maud had so many elements of an ideal horror movie & really was a good movie. As I think back over it, it seems like the overall slog of this week (everything shoved into 3 days due to time constraints) really affected my first watch & impression.

Additionally, Maud/Katie is a fucking insufferable narrator. I understand that her self-righteous bullshit is key to the storytelling but as someone who grew up in a rural Baptist community, the whole self-obsessed “god’s favorite servant” put me into a state of perpetual gag.

So, I was tired of watching movies & I hated the main character right off the bat. Admittedly, I didn’t come into it with a lot of balance.

The movie gives you a few clues but is incredibly open-ended. I still have no idea what happened & not in a bad way -- you often don’t get the answers in these types of stories. Was Maud/Katie suffering delusions? Was she interacting with some deity? Or just a non-human spiritual entity? I couldn’t tell you.

The spiritual voice using Welsh feels a little off, like perhaps it’s a clue, especially for a Catholic convert. I’m still not exactly sure where the movie is set but obviously somewhere in the UK & the actress who plays Maud/Katie has a Welsh name & the character seems to understand the voice. So, it’s possible that I’m overthinking it all & it’s all just specific to the setting or background.

Still, Latin is typically the spiritual language of choice when dealing with Catholic mythologies/stories. Direct communication via the languages of the people is more of a Protestant idea.

Regardless, delusion is still on the table. I’d assume that beyond locale & individual ancestry, most people in the UK have an idea of what Welsh, Scotts, & Gaeilge sound like & I could see that knowledge bleeding into the delusions of someone having a severe mental health crisis.

Is it a non-human spirit? It could be some sort of mythological figure or old god pertinent to Wales.

Is it the Christian God? Seems increasingly unlikely, especially since most of the movie is predominantly English & Katie/Maud never speaks Welsh or explains any personal connection to the language. Then again, for all I know the setting could be Swansea. It’s not said in the movie & the setting wasn’t mentioned in a cursory reading of the movie’s IMDB or Wiki pages.

In the end, I walked away from this thinking I was missing some key element & perhaps I didn’t pay close enough attention. Then again, the things I read about the movie & conversations I had with others who watched offered no further clarification so perhaps it was intentional on the part of the filmmakers.

Either way, this was one of the better movies on the list so far.

Current ranking:

Llamageddon

St. Maud

Mortal

The Voyeurs

Sea Fever

Demon House

It Came from the Desert

I feel at this point I need to explain the ranking a little better... This year I’m basing it 100% on how much I enjoyed the movie. Objectively St. Maud is a better movie than Llamageddon but I enjoyed Llamageddon more so it stays at the top of the list.

& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.

See you tomorrow!