webbywatcheshorror

[webbywatcheshorror]

It's that time of year again, where I participate in a grueling, three month challenge to watch 100 horror movies I've never seen! Like the last two years I will be documenting the journey using this post which will be updated as I go.

2025's edition of the 100 Horror Movie Challenge in 92 Days has begun! (2024's Challenge, 2023's Challenge)

Final Destination 4

Y2K

Final Destination 5

Final Destination Bloodlines

The Bay (2012)

[webbywatcheshorror]

This blog was made on 4/20??????

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Watches Horror: Jakob's Wife (2021)

Jakob's Wife is a fun, campy little story about Anne- a small town reverend's wife who finds herself going through some unexpected changes in her later years when she runs into The Master, a vampire who takes an interest in her.

The movie itself is enjoyable, but on first watch it didn't really strike me as anything particularly noteworthy enough for me to review it. No, this review is born out of mostly spite after I made the mistake of looking at some of the reviews on Shudder that decried it as 'feminist drivel'.

Yes, I know, I know, never read the comments. It was a moment of weakness.

But hey, it inspired me enough to watch the movie again and see just how incredibly off the mark they were! So I'm going to talk about it, and you're going to either read it, or you're not. That's your choice.

Review under the cut, and SPOILERS AHEAD, as always!

There are a LOT of vampire movies out there- we can argue all night long about which ones are good and which ones are bad, but I prefer instead to talk about what a vampire movie represents, which real life boogeyman its supposed to embody.

We'll get to what I think The Master represents in a moment.

The movie starts off with Jakob, played by Larry Fessenden, standing at his pulpit, preaching to a small congregation about women. He talks about how men should love their wives like Jesus loves the church- in order to make them more perfect and pure, 'without spot or wrinkle'.

The sermon talks about women as they relate to men, specifically the men they belong to, with one line even being 'he who loves his wife loves himself', as well as a verse from Proverbs which decries women who are charming or pretty as being vain liars. (Proverbs 31:30, if you want to double check.)

This is not an exaggeration of the way many churches talk about women, in my experience. For anyone who was not forced to attend a Southern Baptist church nearly every Sunday (sometimes also on Wednesday) for a decade and a half, this part may seem over the top or misconstrued, but it isn't.

ANYWHO, the next few scenes show the rest of Anne's day- she keeps herself busy with hobbies, exercise, taking care of the house and doing the cooking. Notably, after the sermon, she is not standing in a group of other women like I expected, but greeting the parishioners by Jakob's side, only speaking if spoken to except in one case- a young woman with a sick mother, who she seems to genuinely care for.

And when this young woman goes missing, nobody seems to care except for Anne. Everyone else makes concerned faces and spouts platitudes, even claiming she fell in with a bad crowd or ran away with a hypothetical boyfriend, scoffing at Anne's insistence that something is wrong. Anne is, going by all of the above evidence, very lonely, despite being surrounded by friends and church members.

The change in her life is sparked by a business meeting with an ex, who flatters her and offers her a taste of the life she dreamed of before Life got in the way. She indulges herself and returns his kiss but regrets it immediately, saying she couldn't hurt Jakob like that.

Then The Master appears, killing the ex and biting Anne, and the real fun of the movie begins.

Anne's transformation begins the next day, manifesting in both the physical and the mental; typically, when a character is turned, there's a show of their newfound power in the form of some sort of violence. Anne's version is more low-key, more personal- her power fantasy involves rearranging the living room furniture single-handedly while jamming to music and sipping from a wine glass full of (animal) blood.

Jakob is less pleased by her new behavior, assuming she had an affair with her old flame (and honestly. It's not an unfounded assumption.) and pushes back, arguing with her and attempting to find answers without outright accusing her of infidelity.

It would be so easy to read Jakob as a secondary antagonist to Anne, and I definitely can see why some might read him that way, but I don't. We are shown that, despite his faults and the rampant miscommunication, he loves Anne and cares about her.

I mean, this is a small town preacher who is shown to respond to trouble with a 'thoughts and prayers' kind of attitude, yet when he discovers his wife is A) a vampire and B) has just done a murder in their kitchen, he helps her clean up and wants to talk with her about where they go from that point. Tell me that's not love.

There is, however, a LOT of miscommunication going on with these two that goes on for most of the movie- not just Anne not speaking up and Jakob taking her for granted, but also misreading each other's statements in general. Every time Jakob says he wants to save her from the evil, Anne hears it as he wants her to go back to being the meek housewife from before. When Anne takes a more active role in her own saving, Jakob is getting the message that she doesn't respect or believe in him.

Eventually, they do actually sit down and talk, which delighted me- I am a big believer in the importance of communication, especially in relationships, so any time a piece of media has their characters talk out their conflicts it makes me happy. The Master, though, not so much.

The Master is never given a name, nor does she declare a gender (and as a Nosferatu type vampire, doesn't really present as one or the other To Me) but characters refer to him as both 'he' and 'she' so I'll be using them interchangeably.

The Master has been watching Anne for a few days before the attack in the form of rats and by the time Anne is turning her ex down, has drawn his own conclusions about Anne and what she wants; then, without permission, forces her beliefs onto Anne.

I mentioned that vampires often tend to represent a social boogeyman of some sort- sometimes it's fear of The Other, sometimes it's fear of Women's Sexuality, sometimes it's fear of The Lengths One Might Go to Attain Power. The Master, from my interpretation of him, represents fear of Feminism. (Also a dash of just The Devil, from the Bible, and let's be real: some people consider those the same thing.)

The Master's only two victims chosen for the transformation are struggling women- the teenager who goes missing in the beginning, and Anne. Notably, both women belong to the church and rely on it or have done so in the past, in Anne's case. Anne's friend Carol is not considered for the change- but she is not visibly dissatisfied or uncertain about herself or her life, nor does she attend the church.

I mentioned that The Master might also represent the Devil, both because of her specific targets and the way she seems to mimic several behaviors associated with him. First offering temptations for both mind and body, then trying to sow seeds of doubt by claiming that Anne's loved ones will never accept her newfound self love.

He also promises Anne that she will be beholden to no one, as long as she drinks of The Master's blood, and will even be able to control the hunger that consumes her. She will, of course, have to give up her social life and sunlight and have to deal with all the usual trappings of vampirism- but that does sound like a deal with a devil, no?

All of this might make this movie sound overly preachy or serious, but it's actually very funny, balancing out the drama with comedy pretty nicely. In between the relationship struggles and the feeding problems, we get things like Using Weed as a Solution to Vampirism, and Jakob having a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula in his makeshift vampire hunting kit.

The big final conflict is also a good mix of serious and silly, with campy deaths and a bit of monologuing from the Master as she tries one final time to persuade Anne to 'free herself'.

The problem with what the Master says, however, is that she's assuming that her experiences and wants are universal, and hasn't been listening when Anne says she loves her husband.

It was a little disappointing on a character growth level when Jakob kills the Master before Anne can give a response, but from a writing perspective it fits with the theme perfectly: Anne wanted to make her own decision, and Jakob wanted to save her from Evil, and their communication stills are fledgling at best.

The final scene was also really fun, as the pair start to try to plan for their new, uncertain future as former pastor husband and blood-sucking vampire wife, now unsure if they can trust one another. The first time I watched the movie, I thought it was hilarious, and the second time, I still found it hilarious but I also thought it was the best way for the movie to end.

So is the movie feminist? Sure! It advocates for equality, features a complex female lead, has a narrative about a woman being allowed to make her own choices and mistakes, that all sounds pretty feminist to me. Is it the brand of feminism that dudebro types think is man-hating or whatever? I mean, if you're the type of person that thinks anything that focuses on women is anti-man, then yeah, I guess? I don't have that kind of brain though.

Overall this is a very fun watch, with good humor and delightful performances from all the leads. I give it a solid 8 ghosts outta 10! Good music, a fun story that hits on some personal notes for me, vampires, and Barbara Crampton.

I will say, though, if I had a nickel for every time I've seen Larry Fessenden's ass because he was having sex with a vampire, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but gee Larry, how come you get to bang TWO vampire women???

[webbywatcheshorror]

Next Review?

Hey beasties and ghouls and creatures and creeps! I'm having trouble picking the next movie to review and could use some help.

You can check out my current list of movies I plan to review here:

(The Carrie review will be comparing all three movies in one review)

Or, if you have a movie in mind and don't see it on the list, feel free to suggest it on this post or in an ask!

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Watches Horror: Don't Listen/Voces (2020)

Don't Listen, also called Voces in the original Spanish, is a movie about a family, a haunted house, and the importance of communication, especially when it comes to taking your children's concerns seriously.

This one's equal parts creepy and devastating, taking some tropes of the haunted house genre and making them feel familiar but freshly terrifying.

The poster doesn't tell you much, but trust me when I say that's a good thing. If you can go into this movie knowing as little as possible, absolutely do so. Which, naturally, absolutely means you should not continue reading this review.

Because, as always my dear beasties and ghouls, there are SPOILERS under the cut. Let's get to it!

Don't Listen opens up with an overhead shot of a filthy swimming pool, a red ball floating in its murky waters. We're introduced to this little family of three- Dani, his wife Sara, and their young son Eric, who is getting a visit from a therapist.

A lot of horror movies with children have trouble making the audience sympathetic towards them- The Babadook movie comes to mind as an example. Not so with this movie, however- Eric garners sympathy in the first few minutes he's on screen. Him looking up so hopeful at his therapist when she tells him there are other kids like him, only to be visibly disappointed when she clearly doesn't understand what he's going through.

Eric isn't struggling with the recent move to this new house- his parents are renovators and this isn't his first rodeo. What's different this time are the voices he hears, that demand he draw pictures and won't let him sleep at night. Just the worst kind of art commissions honestly.

His parents are your classic 'too busy with work to listen to my kid' but they're not the kind that piss me off. They try to spend time with him and obviously love him, but they're just Too Busy to really hear what he has to say. Which is tragically ironic considering the name of the movie.

The First Kill happens as Eric frantically draws it, his crayons flying across the page interspersed with the death happening in real time. We get some good Ecto-Electro-Communication in this movie, with the spirits talking to Eric through his walkie-talkie, his radio, and even his electronic toys; but they aren't restricted to just whispering static nothings. There's a VERY good sequence of a figure behind a plastic sheet in his room while he hides under the covers.

Side note- this movie may have the side effect of making you suspicious of common house flies for a while. Seeing one crawl into someone's ear and take over their body left quite the impact on me. (And the therapist.)

A lot of good horror is also incredibly tragic. Sometimes you watch a horror movie and you find yourself lamenting 'If Only, If Only'. If Only Eric's parents had listened to him when he told them he was scared and hearing voices. If Only they had taken him seriously when he went from loudly enthusiastic about the new place to lashing out at school and wishing they could move away.

One of the old rules of horror tended to be that you didn't kill the kids. (Yes, there's exceptions, don't @ me) Don't Listen ups the emotional tension by breaking that rule and not just for shock value. The second half of the movie is centered on the aftermath of Eric's death and how it affects his parents and the house.

One of the core themes of this movie is possession. Some of it is, of course, being possessed by spirits (via house flies. In the ear canal. Cannot stress enough how repulsive that is. It rules.) but also being possessed by your grief. Grief makes people desperate, which in turn can make them do things they might never have considered before, or behave in ways they would find appalling otherwise.

Dani's grief causes him to become single-mindedly focused on his son's spirit who contacts him through the walkie-talkie. In his grief, he does not stop to consider that this may not even be his son- despite evidence to the contrary and the advice of the expert he brings in to help. Sara's grief, meanwhile, makes her suspicious and aggressive, assuming the worst of her husband without bothering to listen to him explain.

The second half of the movie is where things get far more tense and atmospheric. The expert and his daughter/assistant give us an excellent 'Oh Shit It's Real' moment when she's monitoring the room via cameras/thermal detection/assorted ghost hunting gear and she tells him the presence they detected is right in front of him- but from his perspective, there's just an empty room.

Interestingly, the ghosts are shown to have a heat signature, unlike most media where they're depicted as having a negative effect on the temperature. The ghost expert's daughter even mistakes a ghost for Dani at one point, since she was viewing Eric's room through the thermo-filter thing. It's never really explained, but I think it has something to do with this particular ghost's overwhelming rage, which I'll touch on later.

The Showcase scene is beautifully sad and horrific. Expert sees his dead wife again for the first time, and it seems as though perhaps there are good spirits here, as well- until she's making him cut into his own arm so he can join her, and it's shown that the vision was all in his head and he's been cutting himself for real.

There's a lot of good background ghosts in this one, I had a lot of fun trying to spot them during the high tension scenes in particular. However much I enjoy playing Spot the Thing, though, one of the most nerve-wracking scenes To Me is when the mom is playing Peekaboo with the world's dirtiest ghost. I don't know about you but if I saw those nasty looking feet while peeking under the bed, there's no way in hell I'd be doing a TRIPLE TAKE.

The first time I was watching this movie, I actually paused it and pointed at the screen because, while looking in the background for more ghosts, I spotted a Whipstaff Manor playset! Now, the 1995 live action Casper movie is my very favorite movie, and when I started thinking about WHY that particular toy would be here, I realized that there's actually a lot of similarities between these two films.

Both movies deal with grief, with the loss of a child driving a parent to extremes. Both feature a father with a headstrong daughter, chasing literal ghosts in the hopes of one day making contact with their deceased wife. Both movies even have a hidden underground room! However, in this movie, the hidden room is also a Spanish Inquisition-era torture dungeon, complete with corpses.

Yeah, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition (nobody ever does, so I hear). Part of me was laughing but the rest of me was horrified- when they tell you what happened, when they describe the way the woman was killed, you really understand why she came back as a ghost, and why she's so angry. Was she a witch? Possibly. She seemed to have a powerful voice.

The run up to the climax of the film is really good, making you question whether or not we're about to lose one of the three remaining characters, if we're going to witness yet another tragic death. The relief is almost tangible when they put an end to the witch's ghost and set her free- the evil is defeated (though, is she evil? Did she commit these acts as a spirit with intent or is she lashing out as a creature so consumed by her fury that it's all that's left of her?)

But Don't Listen has one final horror for us. As Dani visits his son's room one more time, he notices his son's artwork on the walls, possibly placed up there as a subtle cry for help. He sees crayon image after crayon image of the deaths and other events that happened well after the death of his son, and his realization that it was his own hands that took his son's life is one tragedy too many to bear.

We end the movie as we begin it- an overhead shot of the swimming pool, though the red ball is replaced by Dani's blood blossoming out into the water. As the credits roll, we hear the infernal buzzing of flies, which made my skin crawl just a bit, after having watched them crawl into ear canals multiple times in the past hour or so.

I did want to touch on the flies again, just for a moment. Usually flies are used in horror to symbolize the stench of decay, since movie scientists have, thankfully, not yet inflicted smell-o-vision upon us. When we hear the buzzing or see the erratic zig zagging of the insects, we instinctively know that something nearby is rotting, likely already dead. But in Voces, the buzzing of the flies is more of a harbinger, a herald of the death to come.

Spain wants me specifically to be scared shitless, I think. This makes the second movie I've reviewed that contains a concept that is terrifying to me personally and, were I to be unlucky enough to be in that situation, I would be incredibly dead so very, very fast. (If you have any more Spanish horror films to recommend, my inbox is always open!)

I gotta give this one 10/10 ghosts. It's tense, it's horrific, it has atmosphere for days, and a killer ending. (Not to mention the Whipstaff Manor thing. I am but a simple ghoul.) I really highly recommend watching this one, multiple times if you can handle it. There's so much more to notice on a second viewing! And try not to panic if you hear the buzzing of flies afterward. They're probably normal flies. Probably.

[webbywatcheshorror]

100 Horror Movies in 92 Days:

Arcadian

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Circle

Day of the Dead (1985)

The Exorcists (2023)

Finders Keepers

The Grudge (2004)

Halloween

It Came From Outer Space! (1953)

John Dies At the End

Kids vs Aliens

Lisa Frankenstein

Maximum Overdrive

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight

Our House

The People Under the Stairs

Q the Winged Serpent

Ruin Me

Stopmotion

Terror Birds

The Unheard

Villains

When Evil Lurks

X

YellowBrickRoad

Z

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

Bad Moon

The Canal

The Dark and the Wicked

Evil Dead Trap

First Contact

Gargoyles (1972)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Inn of the Damned (1975)

Jakob's Wife

Kill List

Lifechanger

The Monster Project

Nightwatch (1994)

Octopus

Psycho (1960)

Queen of Black Magic (2019)

Random Acts of Violence

Sam Was Here

Tormented

An Unquiet Grave

The Vigil

The Witch in the Window

You'll Never Find Me

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Aliens

Caveat

Destroy All Neighbors

Exeter

From Black

The Gracefield Incident

Habit

In A Violent Nature

The Jester

Kill, Baby... Kill!

Nerdy Prudes Must Die

Little Evil

The Munsters

Oddity

Phantom of the Paradise

A Quiet Place: Day One

Salem's Lot (2024)

I Saw the TV Glow

The Watchers

The Platform

The Platform 2

V/H/S Beyond

The Hunted

Howl

Don't Speak

An American Werewolf in London

Crimson Peak

The Host

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Sting

Creeping Death

MadS

It Comes At Night

Tarot

Azrael

The Wolf Man (1941)

The Skeleton Key

The Deliverance

Phenomena (2023)

Phenomena (1985)

Trap

We're All Going to the World's Fair

House of Wax (2005)

Spider in the Attic

The Demon Disorder

Loop Track

100 Horror Movies in 92 Days 2024

Helloooo beasties and ghouls! It is that time once again, where I undertake the challenge and watch a HUGE chunk of horror in just three months!

The rules are simple- starting August 1st and ending on Halloween, I have to find and watch at least 100 horror movies that I have never seen before!

Like last year, reviews will probably be on hold until the challenge ends, and also like last year, I'll be reblogging this post with my list as I complete them! (I will also be keeping up with them on Letterboxd, I am Webbyghost there as well).

Unlike last year, though, I might liveblog some of them! If I do that, they'll be tagged with #Webbyliveblogshorror along with the name of the movie.

If any of you guys are also doing the challenge or have movies to suggest then by all means hit me up!

[webbywatcheshorror]

100 Horror Movies in 92 Days 2024

Helloooo beasties and ghouls! It is that time once again, where I undertake the challenge and watch a HUGE chunk of horror in just three months!

The rules are simple- starting August 1st and ending on Halloween, I have to find and watch at least 100 horror movies that I have never seen before!

Like last year, reviews will probably be on hold until the challenge ends, and also like last year, I'll be reblogging this post with my list as I complete them! (I will also be keeping up with them on Letterboxd, I am Webbyghost there as well).

Unlike last year, though, I might liveblog some of them! If I do that, they'll be tagged with #Webbyliveblogshorror along with the name of the movie.

If any of you guys are also doing the challenge or have movies to suggest then by all means hit me up!

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Lo (2009)

Lo. A story about a young man who faces off against demons in order to rescue his girlfriend- and is confronted with some uncomfortable truths. It rides the line between comical and outright campy, sometimes using that line as a jumprope, but still manages to tug on my heartstrings even though I've seen it probably a hundred times.

It's also weird as hell in some parts, both to its benefit and detriment, but I enjoy it all.

So get comfortable, keep your hands and arms inside the summoning circle, and let's get to the reviewing!

Review under the cut and as always, beasties and ghouls, there will be SPOILERS AHEAD!

This movie was made on a very limited budget, and takes place entirely in one location- the main character's living room. Despite the limitations of budget and locale, Lo manages to tell a very emotional story, and looks pretty good doing it!

(Side note- this movie, as far as I could determine, DOES NOT exist in HD form, and you know what? I think that's a good thing.)

The movie utilizes prosthetics for several characters, giving them unique and vaguely grotesque appearances; its also used when Justin, our main character, starts breaking down and enters into a conversation with his own brain through a wound on his hand.

The characters are what carry this movie, given its lack of flexibility in other categories as previously mentioned. We get drawn into Justin's struggle to command a powerful demon in order to save his missing girlfriend, and can't really help but laugh at Lo's wisecracks as it taunts its summoner and plays with his mind.

Justin is Just Some Guy, stepping out of his comfort zone and into the realm of the demonic and occult, in search of his girlfriend April who has been kidnapped by demons. He really has no idea what he's doing, but it's admirable how he keeps going, despite being threatened, humiliated, injured, and even poisoned. Even after he finds out his beloved's true nature, he still tries to bring her home.

April is, in fact, a demon herself, one of the murderous, vile, foul disgusting denizens of hell, unique among her people for being the only demon who possesses human emotions- the entire spectrum. She's the only one who can experience love, both the good parts of it and the bad. Other demons can't understand what love even feels like, and its shown that they're envious of this ability. (Though they'll deny it, of course.)

We get a musical number performed by the demon who kidnapped her (its name is Jeez, which I think about every time I use that word) that gives us her backstory, which amuses me and also kind of gives me secondhand embarrassment for reasons I cannot fathom. (It's called Demon Girl and you can find the scene on Youtube at the time of writing this.)

Lo, played by Jeremiah Birkett (who also stars as Bluebell the troll in the 10th Kingdom, another underrated early 2000s gem), is hilarious on first watch and compelling on additional ones. Its constant jabs at Justin, such as calling him 'Dinner' because that name better fits his future, make it likeable and blurs the lines of what evil really is. It's easy to forget that Lo, by its own admission, and I quote- 'will eat, kill, and rape anything, especially babies'.

The demon Lo does its best to dissuade Justin from his mission, suggesting multiple times that he dismiss it and burn the book like April had told him, which may be a hint to the twist that comes at the end of the film. Other possible hints include Lo using April's voice, going into details on what demons DO to people, and outright telling Justin that to call it disgusting is to call her disgusting, as they are the same.

Because they are. April is Lo, having fled Hell in the guise of a human, stealing a very special book- the book that Justin later uses to summon Lo. The revelation that they are one and the same seems to be the thing that finally convinces Justin that he and April can't be together, no matter how many demons he summons or how brave and determined he is.

I admit I had not clocked the twist on my first viewing, too caught up in the drama of Justin/Dinner vs the menagerie of demons (and the silliness of scenes like The Waiter putting on a performance while he makes a drink, shortly before he pours Justin's ACTUAL drink) to pick up on any of the hints.

I can't talk about this movie without mentioning the music. First we have the film's score, composed by Scott Glasgow, whose tracks 'Love, Misunderstood' and 'Love Theme From "Lo"' never fail to bring on a sense of melancholic nostalgia. Second, but equally as memorable To Me, are The Rondo Brothers, whose contributions to the film are their tracks 'Computers on Ice' and 'Ghost Patrol'. One of those tracks is fun and silly and the other one is played during the solemn ending, so of course it vexes and haunts me to this day.

I doubt the movie would have made such an impression on me without the music, but it's the dialogue that really gets me. We have comedic lines, like Lo accusing Justin/Dinner of being racist against demons, a solid 15 seconds of Justin muttering 'god damn it' repeatedly, and one of my favorites- 'Dude. Dude. I just heard you fell for the whole, "drink this and you can walk through Hell bit".' from Jeez.

There's also more serious lines that stick with me. Lo firmly stating that 'a demon should never entertain the notion that love is the answer to its question'. Justin pleading with April to stay, even after he knows she's a demon, by promising her 'Tell me you won't eat me and I'll make you my wife.'

The ending hurts in such a good way. Even after all he's been through, Justin doesn't get to rescue April and bring her home. Instead, he has to let her go, closing the circle and burning her book, cut off from her for good. Like most tragedies, there was no other way it could have ended.

Another thing I'd like to touch on is the creativity of using a stage performance to portray the flashback scenes, complete with 'actors', backstage crew, and some very expressive Comedy and Tragedy masks who are literally just people standing behind a curtain with only their faces visible.

And speaking of which, this is a movie that would translate very well to a stage, with the majority of the scenes consisting of Lo and Justin talking back and forth on the floor in a dark room, and secondary characters manifesting in various corners. (And a live version of Demon Girl sounds HILARIOUS.)

Overall I give this one 9 ghosts outta ten, as there are a couple things in it that it could probably have done without, but overall it's one of my favorite movies. No, it's not a scary movie, but there's a kind of horror to be found in knowing you love a monster, despite the monstrous things they've done.

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Pontypool (2008)

Pontypool, based off of the 1995 novel 'Pontypool Changes Everything' by Tony Burgess, is a story about a small group of people trapped inside a radio station, desperately trying to find out the truth of the madness that's transforming the world around them. It's also about hope, about learning to care about others, and about the coolest zombie virus concept I have ever heard of.

It bears a lot of similarities to the 2023 game Killer Frequency- a disgraced former big-shot radio host who's been relocated to a small town, a station producer trying to reign him in and keep things on track, and a terror that unfolds right outside their doors that, at first, they only hear about through callers. There's even a reference to it in the game- I can't imagine it's a coincidence that there's a character named Ponty who features repeatedly.

Review under the cut, and as always, beasties and ghouls, there will be SPOILERS AHEAD!

Pontypool is an unusual entry into the zombie/virus outbreak subgenre. Many of the typical hallmarks are not featured- there's very little gore, no hero with a gun, and with only a small handful of characters, there's no Death Fodder.

It does, however, feature a scattering of details that enhance the experience on subsequent viewings- Grant Mazzy's encounter with the strange woman before he gets to work becomes more chilling as it becomes clear that the virus has spread that far before the characters even know it exists.

The tension builds slowly, coming in the form of calls from listeners and their 'field agent' Ken. Strange things are afoot in Pontypool, with people chanting nonsense, usual callers not reaching out, and employees pulling no-call no-shows, but it's hard to verify any of the claims when they have no visual confirmation.

Pontypool uses the isolation of the radio station and the uncertainty of the truth to create its horror, along with very good sound design, and does a fantastic job of making you need to know what's going on- viewers can intuit that it's a zombie outbreak, but its not the usual type. There's a mob, but they're not out to eat the living, and they retain their powers of speech.

And worse- this virus does not spread through contact with an infected person. It seems to manifest spontaneously, starting with the afflicted seeming to get stuck on a word or mimicking sounds around them before it starts to take over.

You see, it spreads through something much harder to fight off- the spoken word itself is the carrier, and the virus takes hold through the carrier's comprehension. Certain words are identified as being more likely candidates for carrying the infection, such as terms of endearment or philosophical and religious discussion, but anything could be a trigger- but only in English.

An infected individual is compelled to speak their trigger word, even as they try to stop themselves from it. Switching languages, once infected, will slow but not stop the virus as it copies itself through the host's comprehension. It starts subtle, but then rapidly takes over, scrambling the host's brain and attempting to jump into another host in any way it can.

The concept is so fascinating to me. How do you fight comprehension? How do you stop understanding what you're saying? I mean, I do it all the time, but not on purpose- trying to deliberately NOT understand something is a bit like trying not to think of pink elephants, right? Fighting against your own brain, against your own understanding, is hard enough without a virus upping the difficulty.

So how can you fight back? You kill the word that's killing you. You take the word and you break it, you make it mean something else, you take kill and make it mean kiss. You take the sense and remove it.

There are several chilling moments in this movie, with my favorite one being the scene where they're reading a translated warning over the air that describes how the virus takes hold and ends in "Please avoid the English language. Please do not translate this message." It's just so simple and effective, especially the look of realization on Grant's face as he finishes reading the translation.

Another way Pontypool differs from the usual zombie movie formula is the small cast, as I mentioned before. When we lose a character, it's more personal. Even the loss of Ken, who never appears on screen, is felt as we hear him succumb to the infection. When Laurel-Ann is infected, it's even sadder, watching her go from realizing there's something wrong with her to endlessly slamming herself into the door until she collapses.

Pontypool is not a story about action heroes. It's not about overcoming hordes of undead. It's about hope. The radio station itself is called The Beacon, and it's through this beacon that our protagonists try their best to deliver that hope. The doctor sacrifices himself to keep Grant and Sydney safe, in the hopes that they can survive. Grant sends out the message 'Sydney Briar is Alive' in the hope that the infected will echo it far enough so that her family knows she's safe.

Grant and Sydney spend their last living moments broadcasting what sounds like incomprehensible gibberish in the hope that, even if they don't make it, someone will hear it and be saved. That maybe someone else can find the sense in the senseless.

The credits reveal that, sadly, the infection still spreads, but Grant's name does, too. There's still hope that someone can hear his final message.

Pontypool delivers a new kind of zombie film experience, one I have enjoyed repeatedly and recommend at every opportunity. I give it ten outta ten ghosts- the tension delivers, the concept is unique and creative, and Stephen McHattie's radio voice is superb. I've said it before and I'll say it again, please watch this movie.

Movie.

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[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Ink (2009)

Ink is a movie about extraplanar entities, invisible to our plane, who visit us at night and deliver dreams (or nightmares). One night, a young girl's soul is kidnapped, leaving her waking body comatose. Allel, a Dreamgiver, must hunt down the creature who stole her before it's too late.

Ink is another movie that I love dearly! I love the worldbuilding, the characters, the use of music and lighting.

It's not a very well-known movie, which is a shame, because I feel like it could have a fairly strong following if more people got to see it.

So let's talk about it! Review under the cut, and as always, SPOILERS ahead!

Alright, STRICTLY SPEAKING, Ink is not a horror movie. It's more of a fantasy with some elements of horror and suspense. But this is my review blog and I do what I want.

The movie opens up with a scene of a little girl (Emma) and her father (John) spending time together one morning. She wants to play pretend, but Dad is awkward, like he's not sure how playing pretend works, but he gives in and tries anyway, leaping out of his comfort zone and into her world of pretend beasties and forts they must defend. it's really cute, if a little too brightly lit.

Then we are introduced to a core concept of the movie- the Dreamgivers. As the neighborhood falls asleep, dozens of individuals literally POP into existence and slip into their homes, where they deliver sweet dreams through a gentle touch. It is weirdly shot in some places, though, reminding me of a medication commercial, but I suppose that can be the nature of dreams.

The Dreamgivers just look like regular people, in contrast to their opposites, the Incubi, who are dressed in black shiny trenchcoats and have their faces projected onto a screen like a mask. The Incubi deliver nightmares, as you might expect, though not through touch- they simply sidle up to a sleeper and whisper negativity that influences the dreams.

I like how differently the two factions are portrayed- the Dreamgivers are warm, personal, almost loving in their duties, while the Incubi are cold and impersonal, projecting fears and insecurities on their victims from afar.

In this world, however, there are more than just Dreamgivers and Incubi, and we meet our primary antagonist, Ink, when he POPs into existence and steals Emma, who is living with her grandparents. Except, he has stolen her on This side of reality- the Dreamers' side- leaving her physical body there without a soul.

Our Dreamgiver protag Allel tries to fight Ink off, and is backed up by some of her compatriots, giving us a really cool detail about the Dreamside World. When objects are damaged, such as furniture, it reverses itself back into its normal state moments later. It's a really cool visual and helps to establish the fact that Dreamsiders can't affect the real world.

Ink kicks everyone's ass and manages to escape with Emma's soul by playing a funky lil beat on a hand drum, which opens a gateway they vanish into. That, in itself, is a cool ass concept. Let me just play a little ditty and get gone.

Ink (the character) is a tragic figure. During the course of the movie, we learn his goal is to become an Incubus- detached, unfeeling, perfectly formed. We are told that his entry into the Dreamside was painful, and when we get a face reveal, we see he is covered in scars, with an almost comically enlarged nose (think close to Adam Maitland's character transformation in Beetlejuice for a comparison) and only a few long thin strands of hair on his otherwise bald, scarred head. he intends to deliver Emma's soul in exchange for this new status.

See, the Dreamside is implied to be the Afterlife. There are angelic figures like Liev the Storyteller; demonic figures like the Incubus Prince; drifters, like Ink, who used to be human but never settled into one side or the other; and Pathfinders who can hear the beat of the world and actually influence it.

The Pathfinder we meet is a blind man named Jacob who serves as a guide and comedic relief from some of the dramatic tension, and is also my second favorite character behind Emma. He seems deeply unserious, but he's dedicated to the task at hand- saving Emma's soul before her body expires. He's just gonna give Allel shit about it the whole time. ("What are we supposed to do when we find Emma on the other side?" "SHAKE THE SHIT OUT OF HER.")

His ability to affect the world gives us my absolute favorite sequence in the movie- he opens his little case he's been carrying and through it, emits a soft little gust of wind that sets off a chain reaction eventually culminating in a car wreck that sends Emma's father to the same hospital she's in. (Even if you don't want to watch this entire movie I do highly recommend looking up that scene on Youtube!)

This movie is an artistic one, utilizing light and environmental storytelling to provide a lot of the details- for example, when John is actively being influenced by an Incubus, the world around him dims, then darkens considerably, showing just how alone he feels in his misery and anger. During the first Flashback sequence, he is shown to be (literally) in the spotlight at work, over and over, congratulated for his business sense and smart dealings, while at home the light is dim as his wife pleads for him to stop working such long hours and spending so much time away from the family.

The movie also uses color to signify which layer of reality we're in- the real world is often overly bright, but colorful, where the Dreamside is mostly gray and muted. I like visual cues that communicate to the viewer details like that, helps me keep track of what's going on and where we are.

The Twist of the movie is decently set up and can be figured out if you're paying attention, but don't feel bad if you don't, since there is some timey wimey bullshit going on. Alternate Worlds love having time work differently than the real one, and while it may be a cliche, it's a fun story element that opens up more possibilities.

Ink is John. Or, at least, a version of him that could be, if he keeps on the path he's on right now. Ink is what happens when John ignores his daughter's condition and continues to work and do coke and withdraw from the only family he has left, resulting in Emma's death. Ink is what happens when John gets so low he takes his own life.

The Final Battle is a fantastic scene- on the Dreamside, we have a handful of Dreamgivers fighting to keep the Incubi who are swarming the hospital at bay and away from John so he can make his own choice; on the reality side of things, we have a normal day in a hospital, with John wandering down the halls in search of Emma. There's a sense of urgency and a rapidly approaching time limit on the Dreamside, but in the real world it's peaceful, almost dreamlike.

Ink/John's journey to recovery parallels how hard it is to come back from the darkness in our own world. How the promise of relief from your pain can be so seductive that you'd give up anything, everything, just to be free. How hard it is to let go of your resentment and admit when you're wrong, when you need help. How even a hand extended in friendship can seem like a threat.

This movie ends on a good note, leaving me with a sense of relief and satisfaction. As I said before, it's not so much a true horror movie as it is a fantasy with some horror elements, so that's probably why it has such a happy ending, but I digress.

I give this one ten ghosts outta ten, because I love the story, the worldbuilding, the visual effects, and the characters a hell of a lot. And because Jacob is right, sometimes you really do just gotta shake the shit outta people. (Maybe don't orchestrate a car accident as your first option though.)

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Saw (2004)

You (probably) know what Saw is. On the slim chance you're one of today's lucky 10,000 who doesn't, it's a movie about a serial killer who puts his victims in deadly traps in order to teach them a lesson about valuing their lives, asking them what acts of violence or self-harm would they commit to keep themselves or their loved ones alive?

I won't lie to you. Saw is one of my favorite movies of all time, above almost all others. I've mentioned on a few other reviews how much I loved them, how much they influenced me, but this one blows them all away. It came out on video around when I was 15 or 16, and back then I hadn't had a lot of real experience with horror as a genre, but I thought I knew enough about it. And I didn't care much for it. (I used to be a huge wuss. I still am, but I used to be, too.)

Then my dad brought this movie home, and when I finally got around to watching it, I was entirely and irrevocably altered. Suddenly I realized that I knew absolute jack shit about horror. Its potential, the kinds of stories you could tell, the effects it can have on an audience. Without Saw, I would be an entirely different person, and I know how that sounds. I really do. But it's the truth.

Anyway, I said all that to impress upon you how very incredibly biased I am when it comes to this movie, so you can keep it in mind as we dive into more specific things during the review.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I am looking at this as a standalone film, and not the first of a franchise of films. (I might, sometime in the future, review the series as a whole, but not today.)

Review under the cut, and as always beasties and ghouls, SPOILERS ahead! (Yes. There are people who haven't seen this movie. Why they'd be reading this, I have no idea, but that's their business.)

Where do I even begin with Saw. I could talk for hours about it, the characters, the tragedy of it all, the in-universe details and the real life behind the scenes stuff. I am fully enamored with this film.

We'll start with the cinematography, since I'm not very knowledgeable on the topic and I'm less likely to ramble endlessly about it.

The scenes of the other victims in their traps, where it speeds up, really gives them a sense of mania, of panic. It really adds to the terror of the situation and gives these characters we get to see so briefly some needed characterization with the camera work alone. In fact, every time they do the choppy editing, it lends a feeling of tension that permeates the entire movie.

There's a scene, one of many, that has stuck with me these past 19 years, and it's the shot of little Diana Gordon sitting up in bed, half her bedroom shrouded in the darkness. On first watch, it's deeply unsettling, but even after you know who it is, it doesn't get any less fucking terrifying. One of my fears is the dark, not being able to see into a room or the entire room, because of scenes like this.

The characters. Good god, do I love the characters in Saw. They're complicated, flawed, neither good nor evil but a secret third thing: deeply human. (Except John Kramer, but we'll get to that.) They're all just People, trying to make it through the day, however they can. Adam, trying to pay his bills and keep himself fed by spying on people; Lawrence, dealing with the stress of being a doctor and a father who's lost his joie de vivre and decides to cheat on his wife about it; Tapp, wracked with guilt over losing his partner and letting Jigsaw escape, throwing everything he has into stalking the wrong man at the cost of his own health. The more we learn about these characters, the more fascinating they become to me.

Let's talk about John for a moment. More articulate people than I could tell you, in rich detail, about why he's not a savior, but I tend to just boil it down to this: you can't 'fix' people with trauma. I think John is evil, or close to it. Look at the people he chooses to punish- Paul, who cuts himself; Mark, who claims to be sick but is also seen out and about; Amanda, a drug addict. Paul could have depression or some other mental illness. Mark could have an illness that is only debilitating /some/ of the time. Amanda has an addiction problem. You know what would have actually helped them? A fucking support system. Some understanding. Not additional issues, JOHN.

John is, despite his tendency to target those already struggling, still an interesting person, as Zep says. He's also a hypocrite of the highest degree. Shaming Adam for being a voyeur, but drugging himself so he can lay in the middle of the bathroom floor for who even knows how many hours just so he can watch Adam and Lawrence fumble around? Pot meet kettle situation.

(I'm trying to keep this from becoming an entire-ass essay, I really am, but as I mentioned, I could do this all day.)

Adam and Lawrence's transformation throughout the movie is so intriguing to me. Lawrence, the logical Father Knows Best guy, used to always being the one in control of any given situation. Adam, low on the social ladder, prone to emotional outbursts, used to being kicked when he's down. By the end, they've become entirely different men.

Lawrence changes into an unthinking mess, acting on his out of control emotional state to an extreme degree, while Adam becomes a man who not only finally wants to live, but puts in the work to prove it, attacking Zep and killing him, with the kind of determination he hadn't shown until that moment.

The twist is still just so good. It was mind blowing then, and it's a great story beat today, almost 20 years later. When John sits up, Hello Zep playing in the background... it still gives me chills. To think of how Adam must feel, alone in a room with nothing but the dead for company, waiting on the promise of a severely injured man, thinking it's finally over.

Adam's screaming into the darkness breaks me a little, I won't lie. The horror of his situation finally overcomes him and all he can do is scream. That sound is burned into my brain, possibly for life. Then, the credits roll, with the calmness of the credits, Adam's cries still echoing before the quiet music begins to play, and the audience is left stunned. No relief for us, no relief for Adam.

In the years before the sequels, there was so much talk among my friends and I about what could have happened afterwards. Did Lawrence make it out? Did Jigsaw ever get caught? Did Adam die alone in that grimy bathroom? I used to make up possibilities in my head about ways Adam could be saved.

You see, I've always identified with Adam. Struggling to keep going, feeling outcast, chained in a place we didn't want to be, having to rely on others for help getting out, dismissed as juvenile, clinging to people that hate us because it's better than being alone, and wasting our lives because we weren't living them the way others thought we should, regardless of WHY. I had always hoped he made it out. Maybe in some other reality he does.

Anyway enough about that, let's move on. One thing of many I love about this movie is how it makes you think, really think, about what you would do if this happened to you. Would you, could you, crawl through a cage of razor wire to save yourself? Could you kill the family of a co-worker to save your own skin? Could you maim or dismember yourself?

There's an excellent podcast, Jigsquad Pod, that talks about this next point, but I have to mention it also. Jigsaw feels like a boogeyman figure. He sees your every sin. He judges you, then takes you from your place of safety- your house, on the way home from work, and punishes you. It can happen to anyone, anywhere. He can't be caught, can't be killed. He's a phantom. I love that feeling in this movie, the almost campfire story of it all, the way you might tell it to your friends in hushed voices at a sleepover.

I give Saw X ghosts outta ten. It may not be the movie James Wan and Leigh Whannell set out to make, it may have been rushed and stitched together out of all the footage they had and then some, but it's a masterpiece in my heart. It changed me, in hundred of ways I can't begin to understand, but I'm glad it did. (Not all of those ways are for the better, probably. I mean, I did spend several hours once, thinking up- in detail- what my personal Saw trap would be.)

As much as I love the entire franchise overall, cop-centric soap opera that it is, if it had stopped at just this one, I'd still be satisfied. I hope it never gets a remake, because there's no way it could ever be made more perfectly than it already is, flaws and all.

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: We Need to Do Something (2021)

We Need to Do Something is a movie about a family trapped in their bathroom during a violent and possible unnatural storm. The premise really set my expectations high, but left me pretty disappointed, to be quite honest.

Don't let the little blurb at the bottom of the above poster fool you- if you're expecting anything like the Saw franchise, you're going to be let down. (That said, Jigsaw would definitely put the dad character in a trap and I'd pay to see it.)

Review under the cut, and as always, SPOILERS ahead!

It starts off with some promise. A storm is coming, gather your family into the safest room in the house until it's passed. I've done it plenty of times in my life and I daresay I'll do it again- so I have what you might call some experience. Which, clearly, this family lacks, as they bring absolutely NOTHING by way of supplies. Not snacks, not blankets and pillows, not spare chargers, NOTHING. Aside from Dad's thermos with what appears to be an alcoholic beverage of some sort and a few board/card games.

The bathroom itself is nice and big, which makes me wonder about the rest of the house, but we never actually get to see it. With the exception of a few flashback scenes, the entire movie takes place in the bathroom. (I'm officially calling it- Bathroom Horror is now its own sub-genre. I'm going to make a list.)

My one complaint about the bathroom is but a simple one- why in the name of CAD does the only door open OUTWARDS? Go ahead, look at all the bathroom doors in your house for me. Hell, ANY of the doors in your house. They all open inward, do they not? This simple issue is what causes the rest of the movie to unfold the way it does, so it's not like it was an oversight or anything. It's just baffling to me.

Now onto the characters. I couldn't really feel much attachment to any of them, but I did feel sorry for the kids. Dad's an alcoholic asshole, Mom's a passive aggressive adulterer, and they spend most of the movie bitching at each other at the slightest provocation. The kids are better, they're just fairly typical kids. Sister's a teenager who snarks at her kid Brother (age not stated that I recall, but he's younger than 11 I'd say? I genuinely cannot estimate people's ages.) who pokes fun right back at her. Fairly decently written siblings.

I spent most of the movie waiting for things to get weird, to get creepy, but almost the entire time is spent watching them slowly just unravel- which could have been fine and dandy except I was promised something MORE. And it would have been fine if we were given any indication of how much time has passed, because otherwise they start losing their shit about ten minutes into the storm.

The storm brings down a tree directly through the roof of whatever room the bathroom is attached to and blocks the door, which, again, opens outward for some reason. The 'windows' are far too small to be of any use, and Dad claims the walls are *checks notes* SIX FEET THICK. Now, I never actually used my drafting training to actually make anything, but I'm pretty damn sure nobody builds houses with walls that are six feet thick.

There are so many hilarious moments, but I get the sense that they weren't intended to be funny. But how else am I meant to respond to things like the World's Most Aggressive Rattlesnake and the demon not!dog? Or when, in some kind of fit of madness, Dad starts whipping Mom with the dead rattlesnake after having bitten its head off? ('Like Ozzy,' he says, because 'snakes are just bats that can't fly!')

Most of the dialogue is weirdly phrased or just unrealistic in general, as well as their decision-making. Not once do they search for anything to try to unscrew the door hinges. Towards the final scenes, Mom is able to bust through a part of the wall that leads... Elsewhere? But they didn't bother with doing that anytime beforehand, only after two of them are dead and demons kill the only other people they hear from.

But by far the most unrealistic part is when, in complete seriousness, Daughter confesses that she and her goth gf might have summoned the demon storm with a spell they found on the internet and then didn't even do right. And her parents BELIEVE HER lmao. Like, right away, even. No 'oh sweetie that's ridiculous' or anything.

Some parts felt too rushed through, and some felt too drawn out, and some I wished were handled differently. There was a lot that could have been done with this story, and it really did have some good beats, but overall it felt awkward and kind of boring. And the worst part is the ending- it finally got interesting! Mom comes back from checking what was going on outside (absolutely COVERED in blood by the by) and outright refuses to say what she saw, then there's Sounds coming from the hole she crawled through, they scream, and it ends. We never even got to see the Demon whose tongue they (for some reason???) decided to eat.

I really did want to like the movie, I did, but you can't promise me a supernatural storm and then make me sit through a whole lot of pointless, baffling family drama when there's demons and shit out there. I give this one four outta ten ghosts. It just didn't work for me, but it had me laughing whether or not it meant to. Both times I watched it, I could not help but laugh when the kids are excitedly letting the 'dog' that's just out of their view lick their hands and asking 'oh who's a good boy?' only to be horrified when it answers, gleefully, 'I'm a good boy!' as it licks them.

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Shelter/6 Souls (2010)

Shelter, also called 6 Souls for its US release, is a story about a forensic psychiatrist who takes on a new client, intending to prove his disassociative identity disorder is fake, and gets in way over her head.

That synopsis by itself does nothing to really prepare you for what actually goes on, but does the job of letting you know that the main character, played by the captivating Julianne Moore, is not the kind of psychiatrist you’d like to have. 

Before we get started I’d like to note that I do not have a thorough understanding of DiD and therefore am not equipped to touch on what are probably very glaring inaccuracies. Horror is, sadly, rife with the misinterpretation of mental illnesses in the interest of using them to frighten audiences.

With that in mind, let’s begin. Review under the cut, and as always, SPOILERS ahead!

Ever watched a movie that starts out intriguing, adds elements that really add to the suspense and mystery, only to not only fumble the ball but start running with it back in the other direction? That’s what this movie did for me.

The main character is Dr. Cara Harding (not to be confused with another Julianne Moore role, Dr. Sarah Harding), a forensic psychiatrist with a strong belief in God and a strong disbelief in certain mental diagnoses. Her father and young daughter, who I believe is 8, have lost their faith due to the fact that Cara’s husband was murdered. This is an important plot point.

Cara’s father, played by Jeffrey DeMunn, convinces her to see a new patient who, as he puts it, has quite the act, and he thinks she will find him very interesting. This is where it started to get interesting for me- she meets David, who is paralyzed from the waist down. He’s a polite young man with a Southern drawl, who answers her questions dutifully. Nothing unusual about him, until her father calls him from the office phone and asks for Adam to be put on the phone.

This causes him to shift into his Adam persona, who is a far cry from the soft spoken David in many ways- including physically, as Adam is colorblind where David was not. Oh, and Adam isn’t paralyzed, either.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays the different personalities incredibly well. Posture, body language, all of it- each one is distinct from the others. And there are others. Despite the narrative presenting it as DiD for a lot of the runtime, what Adam actually has going is a lot more supernatural in nature- the ‘other personalities’ are actual people who’ve died.

When Dr. Cara discovers that David was a real person, she does something I consider to be awfully cruel. She finds David’s mother, (played by the delightful Frances Conroy) a deeply religious woman, and arranges for her to meet with Adam with the intention of having her meet David. Now I’m no fancy doctor, haven’t studied psychology or anything, but it strikes me as a very poor idea to bring a woman in to meet a man who, from your perspective, has created a ‘fake persona’ where he ‘pretends’ to be her dead son. It goes about as well as you’d expect, even though David is able to tell his mom things only the two of them ever knew about.

Cara of course had not considered the consequences of her actions, because she is so focused on proving that DiD is a ‘medical fad’ and isn’t real, that things like ‘basic human decency’ and ‘what a doctor is actually supposed to do’ are cast aside. Her dad calls her out on this later, which pleased me, since she should be ashamed of herself. If I had a doctor do anything like that to me there’d be PROBLEMS.

She also takes David to the scene of his murder which results in him having flashbacks and freaking right the hell out so badly that he retreats back into himself and we get to meet an entirely new guy named Wes who is not at all pleased to be out in the woods with someone he doesn’t know. Girl maybe smother your ego a bit. Even IF David had been a personality created by Adam, bringing him to the place where the real David was murdered just seems like a dick thing to do.

Before things really ramp up, there’s a scene I really liked where Cara’s brother is combing through a video of Adam sleeping on the night another character dies (and has ended up as another one of Adam’s ‘personalities’), and is doing some Nonspecific Computer Voodoo when he makes a connection and discovers that the spooky shadowy shape in the video is in the shape of a wavelength. Which can then be played. A ghost/spirit/whatever taking the form of a sound wave is pretty fucking genius, actually, and I’m hoping the concept pops up in more stuff in the future.

Cara investigates more and finally ends up in a small village in the mountains where she finds out what the actual fuck is going on with her patient and it turns out to have been Hillbilly Hoodoo (we got a two for one special in this one, traditional and technological wizard solidarity I guess). See a long long time ago, this faith healer reverend guy tried to convince everyone that only God could keep them safe from the influenza epidemic, and he used his kids as proof, but they’d been vaccinated. When the Hillbillies found out, they kill his kids???? And then suck out his soul, which is a thing they can do, and mark his body as ‘a shelter for the faithless’.

Which causes the Reverend to become functionally immortal as it’s his body, and not Adam’s, that stores the other souls. Adam, also, is hella dead. So he’s been going around collecting the souls of people who don’t believe in God by first cursing them to have nasty boils and burns on their flesh and puking up dirt, and then just sucking that thang right outta their mouth.

And this is where it started to fall off for me. I’m not a fan of most religious angles, real or fictional, because they’re rarely written in a way that doesn’t make me wanna roll my eyes so hard they pop out my mouth, Barbara Maitland style. See, the mountainfolk confuse me- on the one hand, they punish the Reverend (and his innocent children??????) because he went against God and turned to Science for protection; they also are doing Hillbilly Hoodoo and instead allowed him to just run amok, killing as he pleased, which is fine apparently because they’re safely sheltered together in the same vessel. Like are they supposed to be doing the Lord’s work or not?

It seems to me that if you were really wanting to serve God you wouldn’t be damning people for not believing, I’m pretty sure there’s like a whole thing were their sins can be forgiven? Has to do with God’s only son? I guess technically they aren’t fully denied the opportunity to repent or whatever, since their souls are intact, but they don’t even know they’re in a new body, much less that they’re DEAD AS HELL, so I kind of doubt that’s ever gonna happen. 

But the worst part of it was when Cara’s daughter, age 8, is marked for collection, and the Hillbilly Matriarch (the Granny) tells her there’s nothing she can do BECAUSE THE CHILD LOST HER FAITH. THE CHILD. MUST DIE. BECAUSE SHE LOST HER FAITH. A child, who is barely able to comprehend what faith even actually means, is doomed to die and have her soul removed because she isn’t fully convinced that there’s a specific deity. It’s ok, says the Granny, she’ll be safe in the shelter vessel with all the other faithless souls. Cara’s safe, despite being kind of a bitch who’s definitely been responsible for the death of at least one person.

I’ll be honest, this made me so mad. The stakes are at their highest, we’re reaching climactic territory, I’m pretty invested, and then WHAM. Now I’m just annoyed and waiting for whatever bullshit ending they’ve got for me. Cara kills the cursed reverend after he absorbs her daughter’s soul (while her child is the one in control!!!!!! why not call out literally any other personality? You already know how to do it!) and the kid’s soul goes back into her body and it’s implied at least one, if not the rest, follow her there. And that’s the end.

So raising her daughter is going to be a fucking nightmare. Not only do we have Adam, David, and Wes, but we also have: an old family friend AND HER FUCKING GRANDPA, both of whom died during the events of the movie. And can be called out at any time, and presumably can just call themselves out, if the scene were Cara meets Wes is any indication. So not only did I find myself suddenly disliking this movie and whatever message it’s trying to send right when things are getting intense, but now the ending isn’t even satisfying to me.

The events of the ending are fine, decent even! In fact, if not for that bullshit reasoning, I’d probably even have liked it! Like, they could have just said that once the sheltering had begun there’s no way to stop it because it was an unstoppable process instead of ‘oops the little girl doesn’t believe in God enough. We’re done here. Die.’. I’d have been intrigued by the idea of how the kid was now the new Shelter and whether or not this meant she’d be compelled to seek out the faithless or if she’d be more of a passive collector and only take them when they died on their own. I’d have loved to know more about how the aftermath turned out with her carrying the other souls, and having to live with the trauma of knowing your mother choked you to death at one point.

But no, I’m just disappointed and feel like my time was wasted. Five ghosts outta ten for having a lot of interesting concepts and decent pacing, not to mention powerful performances, but then also having an innocent child get punished by death for not believing in a God that let her dad get murdered. Honestly I’m mad about it all over again.

[webbywatcheshorror]

My List (updated as I go)

1. Next of Kin

2. Huesera: the Bone Woman

3. Werewolves Within

4. Sinister

5. The Outwaters

6. Scream 3

7. Scream 4

8. My Bloody Valentine (2009)

9. Ghost Stories

10. Dolls (1987)

11. Spring

12. Last Shift

13. Paranormal Activity

14. The Final

15. Suspiria

16. Cocaine Bear

17. Anything For Jackson

18. The Changeling (1980)

19. Tales of Halloween

20. Freaky

21. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

22. The Gate

23. 1408

24. Butterfly Kisses

25. A Dark Song

26. Sea Fever

27. Dagon

28. Clive Barker’s Book of Blood

29. Paranormal Activity 2

30. The Blackwell Ghost

31. The Craft

32. Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made

33. Southbound

34. Something Walks in the Woods

35. Jug Face

36. The Houses October Built

37. Boar

38. Children of the Corn (1984)

39. Isolation

40. Subject (2022)

41. Scream 5

42. Honeydew

43. We Have Always Lived in the Castle

44. The Dead Next Door

45. Room For Rent

46. Detention

47. Nightbreed (Director’s Cut)

48. Dog Soldiers

49. The House That Jack Built

50. Spiral

51. Relic

52. Frankenhooker

53. Mother of Monsters

54. Let the Right One In

55. Ghastly Brothers

56. Mama

57. The Wailing

58. Mandy

59. The Hallow

60. Annihilation

61. Elevator Game

62. Housebound

63. Ready or Not

64. Spree

65. Starry Eyes

66. No One Will Save You

67. Evil Dead 2013

68. Psych:9

69. The House (2022)

70. Saw X

71. Gehenna: Where Death Lives

72. The Unholy

73. Spirit Halloween: The Movie

74. Scream 6

75. Excision

76. The Invisible Man (1933)

77. Totally Killer

78. V/H/S/85

79. The Boogeyman

80. The Haunted Mansion

81. They Look Like People

82. Puppet Master

83. Mega Scorpions

84. Slumber Party Massacre

85. Slumber Party Massacre 2

86. Friday the 13th (1980)

87. We Go On

88. After Life

89. From Beyond

90. Drag Me To Hell

91. Final Destination 2

92. Scary Tales: Dead Zone

93. The Puppetman

94. Lockdown Tower

95. Cobweb

96. Eraserhead

97. The Void

98. Shaky Shivers

99. Night of the Hunted

100. In the Mouth of Madness

The annual 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days challenge started yesterday but I had plans- which means my challenge starts today!

I won’t be doing any live reactions for the foreseeable future, neither here or on Twitter, but you can follow along with my progress on this post or my Letterboxd list (right here)

If you’re taking part in the challenge, let me know! We can recommend movies to one another and compare lists. :3

[webbywatcheshorror]

The annual 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days challenge started yesterday but I had plans- which means my challenge starts today!

I won’t be doing any live reactions for the foreseeable future, neither here or on Twitter, but you can follow along with my progress on this post or my Letterboxd list (right here)

If you’re taking part in the challenge, let me know! We can recommend movies to one another and compare lists. :3

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Mad God (2021)

Mad God. How can you even summarize this movie? It’s an 82 minute long stop motion animation film that takes you on one hell of a journey down, down, down, until there is nowhere left to go. And you can’t go back. This movie is an experience, and unless your friends are awesome, probably not one you just pop on for a relaxing Friday evening.

I took two entire pages of notes for this review, front and back on each. (For comparison, usually I get one front and half a back.) There is so much to unpack and talk about, but I don’t really intend to bog this review down with too much detail, so I’ll try to keep it as brief as I can.

Review under the cut, beasties and ghouls, and as always, SPOILERS ahead!

Mad God is incredibly surreal. It’s like talking a stroll through the uncanny valley- most things are identifiable or comparable enough to familiar things, but taken one step to the left, metaphorically speaking. Things look like you should know what they are, or what they’re doing, but there’s an element of Wrongness to them that keeps you just a little weirded out, sometimes a little (or more) disgusted.

The movie starts with the destruction of the Tower of Babel, and a scroll with the Bible verses of Leviticus 26:27-35, which talk about the retribution mankind can expect should they turn from God. After that, we start our descent, along with a figure I shall be referring to as the Little Assassin, or LA for short. (Originally I had taken to calling them the Little Explorer, but their role is a bit more proactive than that. Another note- they’re not actually little per se, but compared to many of the environments they traverse and creatures they encounter, they look small. When we see where they began, however, they’re quite large compared to the only other living being we see.)

LA’s gender is neither relevant nor identifiable. They descend through layer after layer of bizarre dreamlike worlds, if your dreams are sticky looking and warped. The music is melancholy, despondent, even. This is a one way trip for both us and the Little Assassin. This movie is not one you forget, whether you like it or not.

Death is prominent is every layer, every new place we journey through, as pointless as it is ceaseless. Small creatures are trampled underfoot, hungry creatures devour others, several monsters are seen killing, apparently, just for the hell of it. In one layer, there is an assembly line of featureless workers, endlessly toiling to create something they will never understand. Many of them just straight up die, crushed and run over and burned, with the world around them taking no notice whatsoever. It feels hopeless. 

When LA arrives at their destination, they find an enormous pile of briefcases like the one they carry. LA is not the first sent down. There have been countless others before them. Like the others, LA is unsuccessful in their mission- the bomb they brought never detonates, the the Little Assassin is snatched up by yet another incomprehensible creature.

LA’s fate is just as miserable as their journey has been. Violated, ripped apart, even their memories are displayed for the ‘medical staff (played by real people)’ to see, all while still alive and conscious. The cross section of the facility shows that they are far from the first to be treated this way- it’s possible that every other Assassin sent down has met the same end. 

There is a brief moment, in which a screaming ‘baby’ is taken from their body, that feels like hope. That there is life that came from this gruesome brutality. But like all the other creatures and beings we see before it, the worm shaped infant creature is killed to create something else new. (In this case, it appears to be an entirely new universe??? Or the Alchemist is just hallucinating very vividly.)

The flashback sequence shows us that, far above, a man with the longest acrylics and a yarmulke has seen the vile world(s?) beneath, and he intends to destroy it. This man is also an actual actor, not animated, which feels so off-putting, but it works. It is implied that this is the titular Mad God, though which definition of ‘mad’ we’re using isn’t clear, and really it could be either, or both. He begins to send down Assassins. When we return to the present, and just before the credits roll, he sends down the next one. It all begins anew.

The overall feeling I get from Mad God is that the cycle of life and death is neverending, and you may never see the end result of all your struggles. Death happens, and the world keeps going. You work and work, all for a goal which you do not see and will never know. Even that which you are called to do can be as futile as everything else. The cycle is endless, cruel and indiscriminate. It’s bleak, honestly.

Mad God is a fever dream. It’s a nightmare you’re having while awake. It’s chaos. It’s disturbing. It’s haunting. It’s fucking AMAZING, whether or not you enjoy the movie. However, this is not a movie for everyone. There is violence, endless death, a non-zero amount of sexual content, not to mention how fucking disgusting so much of it looks. But it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever watched. Somehow, Phil Tippett took a dream sequence and made it visible. On the surface, all these different layers and events seem disconnected, but the way they flow into each other just feels natural.

This one gets ten ghosts outta ten. I’ve only seen it twice, but it has left such a mark on me. I don’t know if I could ever translate that into something I could share, but there’s something different about the person I became after experiencing Mad God. The set design, the environments, the fucking SOUND design, they are all incredible to behold. I doubt there will be another like this one anytime soon, and maybe that’s for the best.

[webbywatcheshorror]

Webby Reviews Horror: Hell House LLC. (2015)

Hell House LLC. is a mockumentary style movie centered around a haunted house attraction, and the mystery surrounding the tragedy that occurred on its opening night. 

Hell House LLC. is tense and atmospheric, despite being fairly frequently interrupted by sequences of interviews and the mockumentary’s narrator providing commentary. 

This one has a lot of tropes and concepts I like, and a couple that I don’t, so let’s talk about them! Review under the cut, and as always, beasties and ghouls, SPOILERS ahead!

To start off with, I love a mockumentary type movie, especially when well-made, and this one IS well-made. The news segments look great, and the talking heads portions do a great job of making me curious about what REALLY happened on the night Hell House opened its door to the public. I’d probably even have watched this if it had been a real documentary, and that’s saying something, as I much prefer fictional horror to real life horror. 

The small town setting of the movie, a place called Abaddon, feels so familiar. I lived in a similar town for many years, and can say with utmost certainty that Hell House would have been PACKED on opening night. That part is 100% legit. There is never anything to do in a small town like that except hang out in Walmart parking lots (because you’re not allowed to hang out in gas station parking lots anymore), so when the fair rolls around or there’s a parade (or a haunted house), people jump at the chance to finally shake off the monotony, even if only for a couple hours.

Now, I’m a simple ghoul. I love a good cast of characters that get absolutely wrecked, I’m a sucker for an ‘Oh Shit It’s Real’ story beat, and a Halloween Event Goes Wrong? Forget about it, I’m THERE. Are these tropes overused? Who cares! They’re fun, and I enjoy them, and that’s all I care about.

The characters are, for the most part, just fairly decent people, aside from Paul, who I hated so, so much. He’s a fucking creep and a sex pest, and an unapologetic one at that. His friends know about it too, calling him out a few times to which he responds with pride. He’s also the main cameraman for the main story, so we get to spend just. SO much time with him. Hooray.

However this means we also get to see him be the first target of the evil that inhabits the abandoned hotel they’re fixing up, which is satisfying. His descent into indignant terror is fun to watch. He goes from this cocky asshole making fun of his friends, to cowering beneath a blanket from a dead woman. He seems to be the only one targeted, over and over, until he disappears, and then after that is pretty much when shit pops OFF.

There are some really good scares, mostly focused on one of the clown mannequins, but there’s also a good one during the test run scene, which I would have enjoyed more but the intensity of the strobing effect was dialed way too high. I also feel that it would have been scarier if they hadn’t shown the freeze-frame of the demon like, right after.

Other things about this movie I enjoyed are: the concept of Lucifer with a New York accent; a man possessed by the ghost of capitalism and then by an actual ghost; the piano tune that Paul plays; the foreshadowing from Sara in the beginning; and how we never get a clear look at what happened to most people involved in the tragedy. 

Now for the stuff I was less enthused about, which isn’t a whole lot. I’m not impressed when media uses pentacles and upside down crosses to imply Satanism/evil, it just feels, I don’t know. Uninspired? I also felt that some of the characters’ decisions were flat out stupid- primary example being the fact that they used actual, locked shackles for their basement actress, and put the only set of keys in someone else’s hands. There’s no universe in which this is a good idea.

I give this one eight ghosts outta ten, for really good scares and intense atmosphere and a nicely wrapped up ending. It did contain a few tropes that bug me, not to mention how long I had to endure Paul, but overall it’s a fun movie that I could see myself enjoying now and again.