★-Day 14 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. It came from Tubi. Should have stayed there. Yeesh. Went with Dead Silence by James Wan. I also watched a few others on Tubi, but this is the official pick. Spoiler, it’s fucking terrible. Not a huge director James Wan fan. Actually, I don’t think I’ve cared for any of his movies. Even the huge ones. Maybe especially the huge ones. This flick was extremely lame. There was an interesting twist at the end that I, for one, did not see coming. It’s up there with Sleepaway Camp in terms of shock and WTF, but I see a lot of complaints that it was obvious the whole time. Bullshit. Gist is one Jamie Ashen returns to his eerie hometown of Raven’s Fair to investigate the mysterious and brutal murder of his wife, Lisa. The investigation leads him to uncover the dark legend of Mary Shaw, a vengeful ventriloquist whose ghost, along with her creepy dolls, haunts the town. As Jamie delves deeper, he learns that Mary Shaw’s curse involves gruesome deaths where victims’ tongues are cut out, and he must confront this ghost lady and her toys to stop the killings. Lame.
Acting is especially terrible, not that the dialogue gave them anything to work with. Main guy, Ryan Kwanten, can’t carry a movie. He appears to have a solid career in mostly television. He was one of the stars of True Blood and appeared in Them and the Creepshow revival. Donnie Wahlberg plays the detective investigating the wife’s murder and assumes Jamie did it. His “thing” is that he is constantly shaving with an electric razor. Even in public, which is gross. Others include Bob Gunton who plays the Ashen patriarch. He’ll always be the Warden in The Shawshank Redemption. Amber Valletta plays the hot stepmother boning old Warden Norton. Only other person I recognized was Laura Regan, the dead wife. She was one of the creepy psychic pod people in Minority Report and played Jennifer Crane in Mad Men. Style is that same digital crap that you see in all Wan’s work. Whether it is Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring, one of their many sequels, or his more recent flicks Aquaman/Malignant, all his movies have a look. I find most of them pretty blah. This movie, way worse though.
★★★★-Oddity. A film that definitively answers the question of what happens when you put Hannibal Lector in a room with a with delicious looking toes. Day 3 of the Nightmare on Film Street31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Revenge night. I thought it was better than good but sort of forgettable. I’m a sucker for a cursed object horror flick. This one features a golem type monster that is truly horrific looking. Made of wood instead of clay. Basically, your run-of-the-mill cheap thrill on Shudder, except really well done.
Gist is Ted, a doctor at a psychiatric hospital, is dealing with the mysterious death of his wife Dani. She dies alone in their new country house at the hands of one of his patients. One day her twin sister Darcy shows up at the house, where Ted now lives with new fiancé Yana, with an extremely unsettling haunted wooden mannequin. The victim’s sister gives this thing to them as a gift. The couple is sort of like, uh, thanks. When the new gal starts poking around and finds something in the golem’s mouth. The former sister in-law freaks, shrieking at her to “put it back.” Um, excuse me, but you gave me this creepy shit. Directed by Damian McCarthy. Only his second film. His previous flick, Caveat, is in this same lane, and is also effectively terrifying. He’s got a solid style. I’ll definitely watch his films going forward. Stars Gwilym Lee as the husband doing some Chekov's bell shit. He's something of a poor man's Joseph Fiennes. Only thing I’ve seen him in is the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. He played legendary guitarist/cool guy Brian May. Star from Caveat Jonathan French shows up as a psychopath. Never seen any of the other actors, but they are all fantastic, as are their characters. One Carolyn Bracken plays both the sisters. She wins the movie. New fiancé Yana is played by Caroline Menton. Guy named Tadhg Murphy plays the googly eyed mental patient. Interesting supernatural elements and lots of psychological tension. The mannequin really gets under your skin as it sits there, looking absolutely terrifying. You know some shit is going to go down with that thing. Movie gets pretty chilling in that sense. I actually let out a little scream at one point. But it veers back into cliché nonsense with a twist you see coming a mile away. It’s still fucked up and disturbing. A very good film, but not quite an instant classic. But close.
Don't fuck with the Chuck. So. Movie takes place in the future, I guess. Came out a year after Child's Play 2but takes place eight years later. The Good Guy Corp is basically fucked when we start the movie. Too many people dying from this Chucky doll shit. But they are on their way back, baby. End up making the first doll on the new assembly line, which has Chucky DNA in the plastic. Immediately comes back to life and kills the CEO, who seems like a real prick. Then it's off to find Andy, again. Well alright.
Find it funny that the company that makes these dolls is a wear a suit to work kind of place with a board full of hard-asses. I have a fancy corporate job at a no-nonsense company with hundreds of employees. I'm on economic development boards with executives. I'm a member of Rotary. Don't see this level of formality and seriousness like ever. Tight ship they run there at Good Guys, Inc.
Anyway, life is still incredibly shitty for Andy, now high school age. He's at a military school and it looks like it really sucks. He gets bullied and Chucky is still trying to take his body and shit. But Chucky figures out some technicality and gets to go after someone else now to play "hide the soul" with. Yep. There is also a war games battle between the two groups at the school. It's supposed to be sort of like paintball except with real guns where the bullets shoot paint, but Chucky replaces them
New kid playing Andy. One Justin Whalin. Played Scotty in the John Waters's movie Serial Mom which I haven't seen in over two decades. Only people you'll recognize are Andrew Robinson from Hellraiser, he is the "Jesus wept" daddy, and Frank the Tank's wife from Old School.
Overall, this movie is pretty bad, but sort of fun. Really fucking weird. Definitely an outlier for the franchise. This is where Chucky just goes off the rails. Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky, gets the MVP for the "Don't fuck with the Chuck" line. Hell of a line. That shit is killer. I think I mixed up some of the plot with of Major Payne. Not a good sign that I watched it just a few days ago and already forgot almost everything. Shan't be watching again.
Sorry Jack, Chucky's back! No Christina Hicks. No Chris Sarandon. No Tom Hollad. Still have Brad Dourif and the kid that plays Andy though. Movie is still pretty fun, and way more bananas than the first one.
Gist of the movie is that Andy is now in foster care. A bunch of cops saw Chucky come to life at the end of the first flick, but fuck that. Toss that bitch in the looney bin. I assume the Chris Sarandon detective character is also in the nuthouse. Anyway, Chucky gets brought back to life via a little blue lightning, the family Andy is with sort of sucks. The mom, played by Jenny Agutter who plays the female lead in An American Werewolf in London, starts out alright, but when the prick dad dies at the hands of Chucky, she blames Andy, who everyone treats as completely insane. Has a foster sister that is alright, played by Christine Elise from Beverly Hills, 90210, but she's just a high school kid. What the hell is she going to do against a possessed doll trying to steal a boy's soul?
Only people I recognized were Grace Zabriskie who was Sarah Palmer from Twin Peaks, the health teacher from Donnie Darko (Beth Grant), and Greg Germann who was the Erik Menedez looking dude from Ally McBeal. All had pretty minor parts.
Anywho, the movie isn't that great and then suddenly it's amazing. The end takes place in the Good Guy toy factory and it is incredible. Spoiler, the way they kill Chucky is first they put him through the toy assembly line where he gets all these limbs attached to him, then they torch his ass, then they stick an air hose in his mouth until he explodes. Whoever came up with that shit is the real MVP of this flick. That shit was dope AF. Posting it below. Greatest movie of all time just based on that shit. Actually, might as well just watch that scene which I'm posting below.
Andy remember, friends stick together till the end... This is the end, friend! Franchise that immediately gets into the cheese, Child's Play is camp all the way. There are some genuinely scary moments, like when the mom opens Chucky's battery compartment and there are no batteries in it. But how serious can you take a movie with a killer My Buddy? Pretty sure I'm taking that little fucking thing.
Gist is a kid gets a popular doll for his birthday from his mother which she bought from a homeless guy. Except it came with the option possessed soul of a serial killer, one Charles Lee Ray. Serial killer does what he does. Like that serial killer Charles Lee Ray is really into the dark arts and murder is just sort of his side hustle. I think he's more driven to murder to fulfill his magic and revenge than getting off on it like a real serial killer.
Directed by one Tom Holland. He hasn't really done a lot of movies but did do this cult classic and one of my absolute faves in Fright Night. Both of these flicks are so fucking fun.
Stars Brad Dourif as Chucky. Dude is a legitimate actor. Was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, stared in the John Huston adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (what's not to love there), Dune (1984), Blue Velvet, Exorcist III (one of the better threequels in horror), and the Lord of the Rings movies. I feel he is one of the best that guys out there. Alex Vincent plays the little kid Andy. Meh. Catherine Hicks plays the mom. She was apparently the mom on the show 7th Heaven. Never watched it though. And Chris Sarandon, who is the vampire whose sweater game is on point in Fright Night.
Probably going to give the MVP to Sarandon. I like the way he plays the cop. Guy just doesn't have time for any of this bullshit and thinks everyon is crazy, even though he killed CLR and caught him trying to put his soul in a doll. See this exchange:
Det. Mike Norris: Mrs. Barclay what are you doing back here?
Karen Barclay: Andy was telling the truth. Chucky is alive and he killed Eddie Caputo.
Det. Mike Norris: What?
Karen Barclay: I took him home to my apartment, I was about to throw away the box when we came in, the batteries fell out. Don't you see? He's been moving and talking for days without any batteries in him.
Det. Mike Norris: What are you talkin' about?
Karen Barclay: How I found out the doll was alive. See, I threatened to throw him in the fireplace. When all of a sudden, he came alive in my hand. I dropped him and then he ran out of the apartment.
Yeah, don't nobody got time for this bullshit, you crazy bitch. Turns out she was right though. She is a close second to MVP as well. She is as hysterical as you'd expect someone to be if this shit were really going down.
I am not sure where we are in the Conjuring series here. I think this is the second prequel, fourth movie overall. The first one was impressively scary, the other two meh, and this one, while scary as shit, was not what I would call a good movie. It was only like two days ago that I saw this, yet I can't tell you much of what happened. This is the archetypal "cheap thrill". Crappy story but the director does a phenomenal job of scaring the piss out of me.
This movie starts out with a youngish family, a dad who makes dolls and a mom who is there, who have this playful little girl that dies when she is hit by a truck on a dirt road. From there we cut to 12 years in the future. The couple, the mom now crippled and the dad a broken shell of a man, now opens up their home to a nun and a group of orphans to "make amends". Of the orphans, there are six(ish) of them, only two of them are really important: the one with polio and little one. Things are pretty much immediately fucked but the horror ramps up when polio goes into the dead girl's room and finds the possessed doll, Annabelle. From there things escalate, leading to smoke monsters, demon dolls, possession, telekinetic disembowelment, nun flinging, scarecrow inhabitancy, so forth, which ultimately takes us to the start of the first Annabelle movie, the second in The Conjuring series.
Pros: Super creepy, unsettling atmosphere. Decent intro. Really good combo of slow burn and jump scares.
Cons: Plot is forgettable. Feels a lot longer than it was (never a good sign). Run of the mill demon flick that doesn't offer anything new.
Just making some dolls
Notes: The opening is Lynchian. We get the dad, Anthony LaPaglia whose biggest role is likely Jack Malone in Without a Trace, putting the finishing touches on the creepy-ass Annabelle doll. This is number 1 of 100. He is getting these little notes that say shit like "come find me" and what not. Eventually see they are being left by his daughter. Normal family from the 1940s or 50s or whenever this is from. Mom is Miranda Otto whom you may remember from The Lord of the Rings as Eowyn. She is barely on screen and her face is covered for a lot of it (later see it was an Annabelle mishap) but she is fine looking here. They go to church and we see some toy store owner that is like, "hey, do you have any more of those disturbing looking dolls (even though that one you made obviously said 1 of 100)? The kids just love those things!!!" Anyway, they get on the road and get a flat. While they are there on the side of the road, the little girl is hit by a truck and killed.
Next thing we see is a group of orphans getting off a bus with a nun and a priest (who does not stay with the ladies at the house). This is 12 years later. Really pull at the old heart strings. Give one of the orphans polio. Her name is Janice. The rest of the girls mistreat her, sort of. The early story focuses on her and her little buddy, Linda, who just want to get adopted. Fuck. Well, that first night Janice goes into the forbidden room and lets out the demon doll. Shit. The next day she goes to confessional and admits that she went to demon doll room. The nun gives her a bunch of shit for this, is like "you are going to get us kicked out of here and then you'll never get adopted." Ouch. Come to think of it, it's pretty inconsiderate having all these children into your home along with all these devil dolls hidden about the house. But Janice, we see, is weird so whatever. She steals the dead girl's picture off the wall which was bizarre. Why would anyone want that?
Several times throughout the movie Janice screams bloody murder just feet away from her sleeping housemates and no one wakes up. Around here we get the obligatory "I'll steal your soul!" line, which (SPOILER FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH HERE) it does, eventually. She gets super creepy here. Her and the doll are inseparable. Linda takes the doll and throws it down a well which doesn't phase it. They need to fucking cunt punt the shit out of that fucking thing. They ultimately determine that it is too late for Janice and lock her possessed ass in the demon room with the doll. This is after all the demon murder and carnage, of course. When they all run out of the house, I thought for sure that the house was going to implode, Poltergeist style. When the police and such come to the home at the end of the movie, Janice is gone. That's weird everyone collectively says, but they are not very concerned. Should have been though as we see the girl getting adopted by the family that gets killed at the beginning of Annabelle. The flick then segues into that piece of shit movie. Roll credits.
The scariest parts of the film was probably the tea party scene when the mom character walks in on her dead daughter playing with the Annabelle doll. The mom has her cross out while the daughter is facing the opposite direction. As she steps closer, the daughter levitates and bones crack and break in disgusting jerking motions. The girl is possessed as fuck, coming at the mom all quick and unnaturally. It's disturbing. The most (maybe) unintentionally hilarious part of the movie, there are several of these moments, comes at the end after the priest comes back to the house to check everything out. He carrying Annabelle, is all, "the doll was possessed but isn't now." He then plops the doll down in front of the girls and is like "which one of you gets it?" Yeah, pretty sure a half hour is a little too soon to make jokes, if that is what it was.
Ultimately the thing I didn't like about the movie was how unbelievable it was. Part of the appeal of The Conjuring was that this was based on a "true" story and it felt real with some embellishments. The thing that sucked about that first Annabelle movie was that is was just a bunch of made up nonsense about where the doll came from that had no basis in reality. Basically, it was over-the-top absurd. This one doesn't go quite that far, but on the whole the plot is pretty ludicrous, though I'd put it second of the four on the most believable list, including The Conjuring 2 which was supposed based in reality as well.
