Another writing for Soda & Telepaths, this time about the Shudder horror flick Shook. It’s a fun flick with a couple of problems, including one MAJOR issue but go and read because I judge my self worth by views
Wrong Turn (2021) – Sorry, Wrong Franchise
Released: 26th January
Seen: 7th February
Have you ever heard the story of how Saw 2 came to be? After the monster success of the first Saw movie the producers were desperate for a second film but the original writers didn’t have the time to come up with a new script. While trying to think of what to do the producers happened upon a script that’d been sent to them by Darren Lynn Boseman that was called The Desperate. After reading it they realised that a few modifications to the script would make it fit in with the Saw franchise and that’s how we ended up with the Saw 2 film that we got. I bring this up because I am convinced that a similar situation happened here with Wrong Turn aka The Foundation.
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Sator (2021) – Sator? I Hardly Know Her
So, over on the old Soda & Telepaths site there’s another little review from me that’s full of the good stuff (AKA me rambling about whatever the hell I got sent to review). Go, enjoy
The Night (2021) – The Outside Shining
So, first review of feb and it’s one that’s over on Soda & Telepaths where I talk about the indie film The Night, which is basically The Shining but through a different cultural lens and it’s really good but please read my review over there so I look all big and impressive
Hunted (2021) – Little Blood-Red Riding Hood
Released: 14th January
Seen: 19th January
If you were to make a list of locations that horror movies take place in, The Woods would probably be somewhere near the top of that list. Something about being in the great outdoors, surrounded by trees and being far away from modern civilisation lends itself well to a horror scenario. Films like Cabin in the Woods, Evil Dead and Friday the 13th have all shown that surrounding a bunch of young people by a seemingly endless amount of trees and leaving them to deal with some form of serial killer can create a terrifying ordeal… you can also have films like Hunted, that work on some level but not as many as it should.
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The Witches (2020) Witches Get Stitches
Released: 10th December
Seen: 20th December
In 1983, Roald Dahl released his 14th novel The Witches and his story of a boy and his grandma going up against a coven of witches has always been somewhat polarizing. On the one hand, it’s a best selling novel that recently appeared on the BBC’s list of Top 100 most influential novels and on the other it’s been accused of being a misogynistic text ever since it released (and considering that the main villain is, essentially, every woman who isn’t a kindly old grandma and it was written by Roald Dahl… yeah, yeah that’s definitely there).
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In Search Of Darkness II (2020) – Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
Released: 18th November
Seen: 18th November
Back in March I talked about a little documentary called In Search Of Darkness, a four-hour long love letter to the 80’s horror film. In short, I felt it was a genuinely great film that was easily digestible, gave a good overview of the genre at the time but had the bad habit of using a lot of films from the same franchise which made it repetitive and robbed the audience of getting to hear about a wider array of films from the decade. So when I found out that they were planning a sequel I had high hopes, even bought it ahead of time, thinking if they could be a little less repetitive with the movies they picked then it could be great…. Sometimes, getting your hopes up can actually end well.
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Freaky (2020) – Freakishly Fun
Released: 12th November
Seen: 12th November
In 2017 Christopher Landon brought us the movie Happy Death Day, a movie that asked the very simple question “What if Groundhog Day was a horror film?”. The result was one of the most fun slasher films in recent memory, which was followed up by Happy Death Day 2U which was also a lot of fun. This filmmaker has stumbled upon a great little mini-genre that he is clearly going to milk for all it’s worth… take a classic comedy with a mystical element and turn it into a horror movie. Proof that this works? The joyfully fun film Freaky.
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The Empty Man (2020) – Yep, Empty
Released: 23rd October
Seen: 31st October
The Bye Bye Man
The Snowman
The Slenderman
Movies that begin with The and end in Man in the horror genre have lately filled me with dread lately. With the exception of The Invisible Man, I can’t think of a good film with this combination of words in the title so imagine how I felt seeing the poster for The Empty Man. If you thought I was prepared for a long slow boring film that tried far too hard to be smarter than it was, then you know me far too well… and you also just described the film to a T.
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The Craft: Legacy (2020) – Wicked Witchcraft
Released: 28th October
Seen: 29th October
In 1996 there was a low budget horror film called The Craft. The Craft came out early in the horror resurgence of the 90s, as in it was released about 6 months before the monster hit Scream completely revived the genre. It was a story of four social outcasts who bonded over a shared love of magic and how their usage of it for personal gain and revenge ended up backfiring on them horribly. It’s perhaps best remembered for the completely mental and brilliant performance by Fairuza Balk, a performance that’s so iconic it basically defined her entire career from that point onward. The Craft became somewhat of a cult hit, even influencing the monster hit series Charmed (the theme song from that series was used in this movie, plus the writer-director claimed to have pitched the series and had his idea stolen) so it has quite a legacy… enough that 24 years later we’d finally get a sequel, and not a good one.
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Movie Meister Reviews 