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Zombieland 2: Double Tap (2019) – Filling like a Twinkie

Released: 17th October
Seen: 11th November

Zombieland 2: Double Tap is a film that exists for reasons I don’t quite understand. At least, I don’t understand why it exists right now. In 2009 when the original Zombieland came out in cinemas it was still a good time for Zombie-related media, the hit series The Walking Dead was still a year away so having a comedy film about a bunch of people surviving in a zombie wasteland felt fresh and new. The style choices and tone all felt like something we hadn’t seen before and it was one of the funniest films of the time and still holds up today. It’s not like they didn’t try to get a sequel out right away, but everything languished in development hell so long that now we’re so far past the prime time for Zombie movies that Disney felt like they could do one. So how do you make a comedic take on a topic that’s already been wrung dry? Well… you just do the same stuff you did the last time only with a tiny upgrade in the technology and the zombies.

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Judy (2019) – Over The Rainbow

Released: 10th October
Seen: 8th November

It’s probably fair to say that one of the most tragic figures in Hollywood history is Judy Garland. Performing since she was 2 years old, Judy went through the wringer despite having the kind of talent that should’ve made life easy for her. With her gifted comedic chops and a voice that no one else could even come close to, Judy had the kind of pure star quality that defied description… she was also turned into a drug addict by a mother who gave her uppers to perform and downers to go to sleep before she was ten. The head of the studio she did most of her early work at (Louis B Mayer, may he rot in hell) would have her living on chicken soup and regularly insulting her looks, calling her “my little hunchback” and putting her on amphetamine pills to help her lose weight (which was sadly common at the time). Go through any biography of Judy and you see the story of a woman who had more talent than anyone else that was repeatedly dragged down by a system that was willing to put her health at serious risk to squeeze every dollar out before discarding her. Her story is also one of resilience, of a woman who kept being knocked down and then got up again because you were never going to keep her down. Her last big moment was a British concert called Talk of the Town, the last thing she did before her early death in 1969. This biopic focuses on that brief period right at the end and that focus helps it, and it’s lead actress, considerably.

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The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019) – UGGGH

Released: 5th April
Seen: 6th November

When we look through history for the point when certain eras ended, we tend to look for major events that were turning points. It can be argued that the 60s, the era of free love, ended on August 9th 1969 when actress Sharon Tate and four of her friends were brutally murdered by the Manson Family (who I shall henceforth refer to as as “that pack of murdering assholes” because I’m the one typing this and I get to be as petty as I want!). The vile crime was historic in how shocking it was and the man who inspired it (now dead, YAY) was instantly recognized as the face of true evil. It’s a tragedy that people keep revisiting in film, to varied results. It’s usually incredibly tasteless, focusing on that pack of murdering assholes and they never have good acting. The one time I can think of when someone did something good with the entire horrific affair was earlier this year when Once Upon A Time In Hollywood did a “What If?” story where Sharon never even had to know who that pack of murdering assholes was… so, naturally, in the same year we get the best possible version of a retelling of the Sharon Tate murders we also have to get the absolute worst version because we live in a hellscape and everything is awful.

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47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) – A Sinking Feeling

Released: 31st October
Seen: 5th November

In 2017 a low budget horror film called 47 Meters Down hit cinemas. With a budget of only $5 Million, it ended up bringing in over $60 million worldwide. It wasn’t exactly Jaws but it was a fun little horror film with a simple premise, a pair of main characters who were intelligent and likable and a simple set of stakes that made it easy to get sucked in and enjoy the mostly mindless fun. While not a classic, it was enjoyable and would easily do the job on any scary movie night if you needed something to add to a mini-marathon… and then someone decided to do a sequel, but with all the good ideas taken out and replaced with dumb ones, because that always works well.

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Cut (2000) – A Little Dull

A few months ago I talked about a movie called Porno, a comedy movie about a cursed porno film that summons a demon when played. It’s a brilliant idea that was just not quite done right so naturally I wanted to see if someone had done a serious version of this idea and it turns out that back in 2000, someone did the “Character from a film comes to life to kill people” idea in a little Australian slasher film called Cut. The film came out in 2000 and boasts an alarming 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, at the time barely making a half million at the Australian box office. This is partially due to bad marketing and just bad timing since a comedy slasher film in the year 2000 wasn’t exactly rare. This was also the point in the horror genre where we were up to the third Scream movie, self-aware horror had kind of been wrung dry and Cut got lost in the shuffle. It only just recently got re-released in a 4K restoration and that’s what I got to see so… does it get better with age? Not really, but I can appreciate its cheese a lot more.

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Rabid (2019) – I’m Infected

Released: 12th October
Seen: 1st November

Out of all the directors whose work I never thought would be remade, David Cronenberg is up the top of the list. How could you remake anything he did? His work is so influential that it’s credited with the popularization of the body horror genre with his early work like Videodrome, Scanners and The Fly. His work is so strange and visceral that the idea that someone would even consider remaking any of them feels like a recipe for disaster. Enter the Soska Sisters who took the risk and remade one of Cronenberg’s earliest films, the epidemic-driven horror film Rabid.

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The Furies (2019) – Beauty And The Deceased

Released: 7th November
Seen: 31st October (Monsterfest Film Festival)

The slasher genre is a very recent creation, really only starting in the 60s with the Italian Giallo films and, of course, the immortal Psycho. It reached a golden age in the late 70’s when it became THE genre for budding filmmakers to grab onto since all you needed were some young unknown actors, a sharp object, a bottle of liquid latex and some fake blood to make a film. While it’s never been mainstream, the Slashers have always had an audience that followed it from the early days of Halloween to the straight-to-video era through to the post-modern classics like Scream until the genre entered a slump in the early 2010’s thanks to a deluge of remakes and the rise of films like Paranormal Activity which proved anyone could make a film, even if they didn’t know how to operate a camera and only had bits of string to handle the effects work. Slashers recently have started having a bit of a revival though, with TV series like American Horror Story finally tackling the genre this year and an actual TV series called Slasher, plus the return of genre favourite Halloween. Now we’re entering a period where we can maybe do even more interesting takes on the Slasher genre, which leads to me explaining why The Furies is a gem of a slasher film that will slide right in along the fun goofy films the genre is known for.

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3 From Hell (2019) – Go To Hell

Released: 31st October
Seen: 31st October

Rob Zombie is probably one of the most fascinating people working in horror today. Even if you don’t like his films, he’s got a style that is unmistakably his own that he manages to maintain in every film, no matter what the film is about. Even the two Halloween remakes he did are so obviously Rob Zombie films, he has such a distinctive style and tone that you either love him or hate him. I tend to bounce between love and hate for each of his movies. I enjoyed House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, thought 31 had a good idea but a middling execution and the rest are just different kinds of bad. Unique, but bad. So when I heard there was another film in the series that began with House of 1000 Corpses I was excited, it’s the one set of movies that Rob has done that I’ve kind of enjoyed every single time he’s come back to the adventures of the Firefly family. I was so ready for this one to be a fun little trip, I found it screening at a local horror film festival (I saw three other films, I’ll talk about them in the coming days) so I bought myself a ticket and I sat down… and spent the next two hours alternating between boredom and annoyance.

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Doctor Sleep (2019) – Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Released: 7th November
Seen: 3rd November (Advance Screening)

In 1977, Stephen King released his third novel. The Shining told the tale of Jack Torrence, an alcoholic in recovery who takes a job as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. While he’s taking care of that hotel a bunch of ghosts basically push Jack off the wagon of sobriety and send him insane, leading to him trying to kill his wife and child. That child, Danny, has a special telepathic power that gives the book its title. The book went on to be a massive success, effectively confirming that Stephen King was the king of the horror novel and was such a huge hit that it wasn’t long before it was adapted into a film that is widely considered one of the best horror films of all time.

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