Horror – Page 25 – Movie Meister Reviews

October 8, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Antebellum (2020) – The Horror Of The Past

Released: 1st October
Seen: 7th October

In my review of Vampires vs The Bronx I opened with a lengthy paragraph about how great Horror is when it’s used as a metaphor for some kind of social issue. Race is one that pops up a lot in horror, the genre has always been a useful way to put that issue into ways that can be understood by all. If you would like to know more about the history of race in horror cinema I suggest you go watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror which is easy to find, Shudder put it up for free and I’m linking you to it so go and learn. Go and learn so then you can come back here and sit with me as I try to understand why Antebellum just didn’t work for me as much as it could’ve.

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October 7, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Vampires vs The Bronx (2020) – Don’t Mess With The Bronx

Released: 2nd October
Seen: 6th October

I’ve said it before, I will probably say it again, Horror is one of the best ways to handle social commentary. It can be a subtle critique of consumerism, like in Dawn of the Dead, or it can be so gloriously blunt that the movie might as well just beat you with a hammer with the movie’s message attached, like in Get Out. It can be a great way to put an indescribable feeling into something that can be easily described and get that feeling across… or it can just take a real world scenario and have some fun with it.

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September 20, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Spiral (2020) – Spinning Right Round Baby

Released: 17th September
Seen: 20th September

When it comes to queer characters as the leads in horror films, I have to admit I can’t come up with many. Nightmare on Elm Street 2 may have put all the gayness into the subtext but it was still there, genuinely groundbreaking for that time (and the subject of a fascinating documentary that I may have reviewed a while ago). Hellbent was a slasher film that made the bold choice to have all the victims and even the main villain be gay men in West Hollywood. Cursed had a gay supporting character, Scream 4 had one character who claimed they were gay (It might’ve been an attempt to not get stabbed, which didn’t work) and that’s where I run out of films (I know there’s more, damned if I can name them). They’re certainly never really pushed by any big companies or made mainstream, so for Shudder to make a horror movie about a gay couple and link the story explicitly to the gay experience is pretty awesome and the film is… good.

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September 16, 2020 leebutler Uncategorized

Becky (2020) – Oh My God

Released: 10th September
Seen: 15th September

Home invasion movies are a staple of many genres, have been for years but I think we can all agree that they really hit their pinnacle with a little comedy film called Home Alone (sidebar, you know there’s 4 sequels to that movie? AND a reboot that was filming until *gestures at the apocalypse*) that showed us the fun side of what would happen if a pair of criminals broke into the house of a kid who just discovered who Rube Goldberg was. Of course this idea is a big staple of the Horror genre, films like Hush and You’re Next pit a home invader against an intelligent home owner who will defend themselves to the death… and now someone has gone “OK, let’s take the young kid from Home Alone and blend him with the badass women from Hush and You’re Next” and turns out you can get something kind of interesting out of that.

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September 13, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020) – The Cult Is Back

Released: 10th September
Seen: 11th September

In 2017, Netflix released the horror-comedy film The Babysitter and it did pretty well. It wasn’t exactly exceptional but it was a serviceable slasher that had moments of creativity but was mostly just kind of inconsistent in what it was trying to do. It was kind of halfway towards where it was trying to go, hence why I gave it a halfway positive score in my review. Of course the funny thing about that movie is that it kind of ends with everyone being dead and that’s really hard to sequelize… I’m just kidding, this is a slasher movie, death is meaningless and nothing has any actual consequences.

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September 9, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Random Acts Of Violence (2020) – OMGZ SO RANDOM

Released: 20th August
Seen: 7th September

One of the longest held ideas that people have around violent media is the idea that violent media, be it film or video games, has the power to inspire real world violence in those who partake in it. No matter how many studies say “Yeah, that’s not a thing” (and there are so many studies that completely debunk this notion of violent media inspiring real world violence), people will look at random acts of violence and associate them with some film that has a similar act. A lot of Horror films get blamed for either actually inspiring violence or potentially inspiring violence and sometimes the genre wants to comment on that. In this case a film called Random Acts of Violence would really like to talk about the relationship between art and real world violence and I’d like to say it does a good job at that, as a commentary it’s just so-so but as a violent horror film, it’s kind of fun.

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September 7, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The New Mutants (2020) – Old and Boring

Released: 3rd September
Seen: 6th September

The story behind the making of The New Mutants would make for a fascinating documentary, because this film is actually goddamn cursed and has had the wildest ride. It started with a pitch way back in 2015 (back in the days when we had hope) for a potential trilogy of films in this New Mutants universe. The film actually finished its first round of filming in September of 2017 and planned for a release in April of 2018… in case you haven’t noticed, they missed that deadline.

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September 5, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Lighthouse (2020) – You Light Up My Life

Released: 6th February
Seen: 3rd September

Back in February, in the before times when we had hope that this year wouldn’t be a total garbage fire, I wrote up a list of Oscar predictions. This was way back in the before times when Parasite winning a bunch of awards felt like it was a sign that this year wasn’t going to be a constantly depressing mess. In that prediction post, between my complaining about snubs and my general apathy because I expected the ceremony to be safe and bland, in the Best Cinematography category I brought up The Lighthouse. While I hadn’t seen it because it was released the day before I posted that prediction list, I was confident that a black and white film shot like an old 30s flick might make the Oscar voters have a shattering climax. Well, it’s now about 6 months later, I’ve been basically stuck at home for a very very long time and going quite mad so a film about two lighthouse keepers slowly losing their minds feels depressingly appropriate.

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August 15, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Beach House (2020) – An Extremely Psycho Beach Party

Released: 26th July
Seen: 14th August

There’s a certain setup in horror that can either work really well or backfire painfully. You’ve probably seen it in films like mother! and it’s certainly the backbone of The Beach House. The setup is that a couple are staying at a remote location all on their own until a stranger or two turn up and the nightmares begin. Either the new people are what brings on the horror (see The Strangers) or they’re part of the nightmare itself (again, mother!) or they’re not really related to the source of the horror but are the first ones to go through it… that last one describes what happens to the new people in The Beach House, and if they’re the warning of what’s to come then the main characters are in for a bad time.

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August 14, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Scare Package (2020) – The Roast of the Horror Genre

Released: 18th June
Seen: 12th August

The anthology horror film is making a comeback and I’m loving it. Over the course of the last few years I’ve talked about a lot of them that on this blog, from Necrologies which featured the ultimate adorable creature Pozu to the more watchable Ghost Stories. Even a couple of indie films tried to tackle this format to mixed results. Now, out of the ones I’ve reviewed I’ve yet to find one better than OK but there are some great ones out there, Trick ‘r’ Treat and VHS are among some of the best anthology horror films you could hope for. Well, now I’d like to throw Scare Package onto that pile of amazing anthology films. It might not be scary, but it’s whip smart and funny as hell.

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