Showing posts with label Witches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Witches. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Hocus Pocus 2 - Anne Fletcher - 2022

★★★- Watched this for the final night of Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween challenge. This one set on Halloween. Behind a few with posting, obviously.

Exiled from Salem, which is actually good for them considering what all goes down in there. Assume the studio people were like, “meh, who knows what really happened with witches in Salem at this point.”


I was pretty much in love with SJP in 1993. She’s definitely still my favorite, besides the zombie dude from The Shape of Water, Doug Jones. Plus Tony Hale and Sam Richardson, who is kind of an asshole in this.


Sort of goes down a road I wasn’t expecting… but wasn’t surprising. It was kinda touching though. 


Actually liked it better than the original. Watched it last year and wasn’t a big fan. This one was ok. 

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Drag Me to Hell - Sam Raimi - 2009

★★★★ - My underrated movie for the Nightmare on Film Street challenge. My third watching since coming out. Still dig it.

What’s not to love? Humor, gypsy curses, falling anvil, Deadites, talking goats, so forth. Plus literal draggings to Hell.

Stars  Alison Lohman, Justin Long, and Bonnie Aarons as the old woman. 

I’m gonna watch anything that Sam Raimi does. It is my opinion he has not made a bad movie. I’ll put this one in the middle for him but still pretty great.

Most people probably know this but Raimi features “The Classic,” a 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 that he supposedly lost his virginity in, in nearly all of his films. It was Ashy Slashy’s car in the Evil Dead movies, for example. The gypsy drives it in this flick.

So, liked it. But I can not abide by a movie where they killed the cat.

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Autopsy of Jane Doe - André Øvredal - 2016


★★★★- I am doing the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. October 1 was “first time watch.” Got my list squared away. Most are actually first time watches. 

Started off the month with a good one. Total bear bones horror hat manages to be legit scary. Could’ve been a play as Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch (both of them give pretty great performances) barely leave the autopsy room. 

The duo play a father and son team of coroners. They have to conduct a mysterious autopsy and determine cause of death when the body of a young woman shows up at a gruesome murder scene. As they conduct their work, supernatural shenanigans start going down and things go cray, as they do. Ending is weak and a total bummer but everything up to the last 10 minutes is fantastic. Also a movie that kills the cat. Will always make me like your movie less. 

If anyone else is interested, I am linking to the site which also has an explanation:   https://nofspodcast.com/horrorchallenge

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Inferno - Dario Argento - 1980


★★★- Found it pretty boring. Beautifully shot but the action is meh. Not a lot happens. Style over substance. Was sort of a chore to get through. 

Didn’t like the cat attack scene. Giving little baby kitties a bad name. 

In typical Argento/giallo fashion, when I think the movie is wrapping it up, I check the time remaining and there’s still a half hour left. Gotta save room for the 17 twists you tack on to the end, I guess. 

There is a guy in this movie that has the most insane unibrow of anyone I’ve ever seen (yet still somehow doesn’t run away with the most absurd eyebrows in the movie award). He makes Anthony Davis look like one of us normals. He has more hair between his eyes so that he does on his head. Plus he is a cat killer. So yeah pretty much hate this movie.

Friday, March 19, 2021

The Love Witch is the greatest movie of all time

The Love Witch. "Men are like children. They're very easy to please as long as we give them what they want..." "I'm the love witch! I'm your ultimate fantasy!" I loved this movie. Like Season of the Witch except good. Solid movie with a lot of layers to unpack. Plus it is extremely visually appealing. Would be a hell of a movie to trip to. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: The Love Witch offers an absorbing visual homage to a bygone era, arranged subtly in service of a thought-provoking meditation on the battle of the sexes.

Gist is a a modern-day witch uses her magic to get men to fall in love with her before killing them for failing to live up to expectations. She drugs them with love potions made out of hallucinogenics before giving men "what they want." She is totally deadpan, which allows the guys to project whatever they desire onto her, which drives them crazy. It's a playful tribute to 1960s horror and Technicolor films, combined with its serious inquiry into contemporary gender roles. It's a super interesting take. 

Came out in 2016. Was written, edited, directed, produced, and scored by Anna Biller. Stars Samantha Robinson (a very pretty lady) as Elaine Parks, the modern-day witch who uses spells to get men to fall in love with her. She played the role of Abigail Folger in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. Didn't really recognize anyone else from the movie, but all the acting was serviceable. One of thems, one Laura Waddell, looks just like Chassie Tucker from At Home with Amy Sedaris, which is like my favorite show. Others include Gian Keys, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, and Jennifer Ingrum, if you've heard of any of them.

Watched this on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. It was his Valentine's Day special. He has a great interview with Biller. His drive-in totals highlight the six "wang doodles" in the film. Also talks a lot about how the movie is super colorful and looks so good because it was shot on 35mm film, instead digital. The last bit focuses on this crazy sequence near the end that involves a random renaissance fair and includes a mock wedding. It's out there... Again, love.

Really hard to pick an MVP in this since Robinson is so great in this role and Biller's vision is so well executed. Ultimately giving it to Biller for putting together such a fine and visually appealing film. Good shit. 

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Season of the Witch (1972) is the worst movie of all time

Your own goddamned daughter, balled in the next room and you go with it. Not to be confused with the Nicholas Cage movie from 2011. I'm talking about the 1972 George A. Romero movie. At 11% on Rotten Tomato, I am sure the Nick Cage (I'm definitely a huge fan of his) movie is more watchable. 

Found this on the Criterion Channel. Romero feminist movie. Sign me up. But this ended up really not being my cup of tea. The movie is a complete mess. It goes off the rails in the first minute of the movie and never recovers. 

The gist of this film is that a neglected, unhappy housewife out of suburban Pittsburgh with gets involved in witchcraft, has an affair with this piece of shit professor that is boning her teenage daughter, and maybe accidentally on purpose kills her abusive husband. I've heard it described as a porno without the nudity or hardcore. It's of that quality, I guess.

The lead actress, one Jan White, is pretty good for an amateur. I'd give her the MVP for sure. This is more or less a film for Romero completists only, though the film was more or less taken from him by the producers. Really not worth watching, in my opinion, though it is a Criterion Collection movie, for god knows what reason. 

Friday, December 6, 2019

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is the greatest movie of all time

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. How's your head? I haven't had any complaints yet... If they ever ask about me, tell them I was more than just a great set of boobs. I was also an incredible pair of legs. Not going to win any awards but it was a lot of fun. A lot of talking around Elvira's breasts, which are stunning. Witty one-liners a plenty with some semblance of a plot. That'll do. Greatest movie of all time.

Gist is that Elvira inherits her aunt's dilapidated mansion in an uptight New England town. The treasure, however, is her book of "recipes" which consist of spells. You see, her aunt was a witch and her surviving uncle, who wanted the book for himself, a necromancer of some persuasion, tries to steal the book and kill Elvira. That is the gist but the flick is mostly humor that comes out of Elvira being an outrageously groovy chick in the repressed town that was probably a lot like the one in Footloose. Also, dudes are basically constantly trying to rape her.

In addition to the lovely Cassandra Peterson (still gorgeous as a senior citizen) as Elvira, more on her later, there are actually some actors I recognize. Some include Edie McClurg (she was a high school student in Carrie and was the one who called Ferris Bueller a "righteous dude" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) plays one Chastity Pariah, the guy who played Kenickie in Grease (his name was Jeff Conaway), Frank Collison who I think of as the "she r-u-n-n o-f-t" guy in Oh, Brother Where Art Thou and the guy obsessed with hotdogs in The Happening, William Morgan Sheppard who is such a that guy, Kurt Fuller who always plays someone who is super punchable, and Dick Miller, he was the guy that knew what gremlins were in Gremlins, is in a movie that Elvira watches at some point.

I am sort of in love with Elvira/Peterson here. Doing half-assed internet research I saw that an unknown Brad Pitt auditioned for one of the teenage boy roles. Peterson thought he was way too hot and felt that Elvira would not be interested in Bob if Pitt was one of the teenagers trying to get her. On her casting notes of his audition, she wrote next to his name, "Yum Yum!" She is a different breed, this one. Into horror, has a cool-ass dog, gorgeous, funny, lovely assets, you get the idea. A lot like my female companion, now that I think about it. Two things cemented it for me though. The first was her dance at the end, which is just indescribable. Then, whilst reading her Wikipedia page, I saw that she is a vegetarian who appeared in a humorous Halloween-themed ad for PETA. Right on, girl. Also saw that she was scalded on over 35% of her body in a kitchen accident when she was little. She said that her Elvira costume "showed only the good bits" but there isn't much you don't see in the movie. Anyway, totally wins the movie and life.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

The Blair Witch Project is the greatest movie of all time

The Blair Witch Project.  "I just want to apologize to Mike's mom, Josh's mom, and my mom. And I'm sorry to everyone. I was very naive. I am so so sorry for everything that has happened. Because in spite of what Mike says now, it is my fault." Anyone who doesn't like this movie got bamboozled when it came out. Another horror movie from my Greatest Years in Cinema Project. This one form 1999. The first time I saw this movie, before my junior year of high school,  was at the drive-in. I was at the concession though and missed the first few minutes. I missed the bit about Rustin Parr, the hermit who kidnapped and murdered a bunch of kids in the 1940s on the orders of the witch, stealing two at a time and making one stand facing the corner while he killed the other one. Sooooo, at the end when Mike is in the corner it didn't carry the impact intended as I thought he was taking a piss or something. I thought the movie was fucking dumb as shit because of this. When it came out on video I rewatched, forgetting all about that, just remembering I hated it and it was stupid. Oh, I thought, that shit is scary AF, actually. Greatest found footage movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Full of creepy campfire scares, mock-doc The Blair Witch Project keeps audiences in the dark about its titular villain -- thus proving that imagination can be as scary as anything onscreen.

Gist is that three film student who disappeared after filming a documentary in the woods of Maryland about the Blair Witch legend have their footage show up and shows a bunch of creepy shit. This is that footage.

More or less just three people in this with a few extras. The three we care about are Heather played by Heather Donahue, Josh played by Joshua Leonard, and Mike played by Michael C. Williams. Josh pops up every once in a while but Heather and Mike not so much, which is unfortunate since they were pretty solid, in my opinion, and since they didn't make shit and couldn't really capitalize on the success of the movie. A lot of why they could was because of the viral marketing campaign that said these were real kids that died. People ate that shit up, this was the early days of the internet and people believed everything. They still do I guess. Bursting that bubble though was when Donahue showed up in the Steak 'n Shake commercials. But some people still believed. Probably Trump supporters now. Donahue was also in maybe the worst movie I've ever seen, Boys and Girls. My girlfriend at the time made me go see this piece of trash. When middle school girls were walking out of it and shit, I thought about breaking up with her for making me stay. I never forgave her for this experience.

I remember there was this "documentary" that came out the summer of 1999 that aired on the SciFi Channel in 1999 called Curse of the Blair Witch that detailed the legend and was maybe as cool as the movie. In it we learn that the witch, one Elly Kedward, was this woman blamed for these child disappearances in the late 1700s. The towns folk ultimately sentenced her to death by exposure and banished her to the woods. Her body was never found. Then we get the guy from the 1940s, Rustin Parr. That shit was hot. Honestly, that whole legend shit and the marketing around it was the best part about it. I mean, total bullshit but cool. That is the MVP of the movie for me.

20 years later for my third viewing, shit holds up. Lot better than that Blair Witch trash from a few years back. Real disappointed by that turd. Loved two of the director's, one Adam Wingard, other movies. You're Next and The Guest but have pretty much hated everything since that. You're Next though is one of my favorite horror movies of the last decade. Up there with Get Out and shit. Then there was the sequel to BWP called Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 which I like a lot but was extremely poorly received. It stared Jeffrey Donovan from Burn Notice and Shut Eye both shows I was somewhat into and Kim Director whom I found extremely attractive. Will have to rewatch that one as well to see if it holds up. Will get back to you on if it does.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is the greatest movie of all time


Halloween III: Season of the Witch. No Michael Myers. No Dr. Loomis. No witches. Confused? You're not alone. No one understood it when it came out. The franchise was supposed to be anthology at this point since Myers is dead and all. Always heard it was a box office bomb but it made five times its budget. Critically it mostly bombed. It is out there, for sure, and doesn't make complete sense but it's super interesting and more fun than most of the movies in the Halloween franchise. If I were to rank the three films in the series up to this point, I'd actually put this above Halloween II. Below Halloween, of course, which is weird since Halloween III is the greatest movie of all time.

Pros: Holds up great on its own. Way the fuck out there (in a good way). Tom Atkins is great. His cute little female companion is pretty solid as well. The villain(s) do a good job of going from over-the-top and humorous to creep city. Sick poster... Just look at that shit... Incredibly solid John Carpenter score.

Cons: Not a Halloween sequel should be stressed but isn't (though I think everyone knows this at this point, 36 years later). Sort of hard to follow. Not everything plot wise makes all that much sense. Ending is dark AF. That Silver Shamrock song set to the tune of "London Bridge" they play 15-20 times in the movie will fucking stick with you.

Gist of the thing... We get one Dr. Dan Challis (played by Tom Atkins whom you'll recognize from such classics as The Fog [1980], Escape from New York, Creepshow, Night of the Creeps [a personal fave], and Lethal Weapon [he was Michael Hunsaker]) who decides to play detective after a costume shop owner comes into the hospital and prattles on about how "they" are going to kill everybody. Once that man's skull is ripped apart by an automaton who self-immolates in the parking lot, his daughter, Ellie Grimbridge (played by Stacey Nelkin), joins him for some mystery solving and coitus in the nearby town of Santa Mira, California, a town famous for Silver Shamrock Novelties which completely runs the town. The company/town is run by this evil Irish warlock (maybe???) dude named Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy whom I know as Andrew Packard in Twin Peaks). At one point we get a tour of the company's hall of fame and hear about their greatest hits which include sticky toilet paper (hilarious), the soft chainsaw, and the "dead dwarf gag" which sounds disturbing. They also make three sweet-ass masks that have little magic chunks of Stonehenge (which they have stolen and is approximately three times larger than it is IRL) that kill people when they watch a certain Silver Shamrock commercial or fuck with the chip in the logo as part of a culling ritual for the Celtic festival, Samhain. The mask kills are crazy. They basically turn people's head into pumpkin goo and bugs and snake come out and kill anyone else that is nearby. They really go out of this horribly.


Sick masks. Also, chick is out of Atkins's league
Written and directed by one Tommy Lee Wallace who worked with Carpenter a bunch previously and was married to childhood crush Nancy Kyes/Loomis who plays Atkins's wife who is fed up with his shit. Wallace would go on to do Fright Night Part 2 and It (the 1990 miniseries version) which are both "great" flicks I remember super fondly from childhood that I should probably revisit at some point. Other notable actor appearances besides Atkins, Nelkin, and O'Herlihy include Jamie Lee Curtis in voice only as the Curfew Announcer/Telephone Operator, Joshua John Miller (he plays one of Atkins's kids) who wrote an insanely dope movie called The Final Girls with Malin Akerman (me-ow), Thomas Middleditch, and Alia Shawkat (among others) which is a meta horror flick with a lot of dark humor that I fucking loved, and stuntman/Michael Myers in Halloween II Dick Warlock who is one of the Ken doll assassins. 

Favorite line of the movie is "It's getting late. I could use a drink." Never has a phrase so perfectly summed up a character than those eight little words. Dude is a drunk, you see. Which brings me to...

She'll probably be alright
There are a bunch of gnarly kills in this one. Homeless guy gets his head ripped off. Always solid. Dude gets skull ripped apart like "The Mountain" did that other dude in Game of Thrones. Kids head turns to mush, bugs, snakes, so forth, which then come out and kill his parents. A guy lights himself on fire. All that shit is great. But the best one comes to good old Marge Guttman who introduces herself, first and last name, to Grimbridge, where she is from, what line of work she is in, and that Grimbridge should "look her up" sometime. This all with an economy of language, in less than six seconds of screen time. "What the hell is that about," I ask myself. She is so going to die, that's what. Her deal is she has a kid back home in San Francisco, another detail we get from that information packed introduction, who she picked up a new mask for even though she had them at the store and what not. Anyway, the little Silver Shamrock logo pops off. So what she does is takes it apart and finds a little circuit board underneath it and starts fucking with it. As she pokes at it with a hair pin, this whilst Atkins and Grimbridge enter the bone zone, a laser shoots out and hits her in the mouth. When they cut back to her shit is all fucked up. Her face is completely jacked and all the bugs and snakes and shit come out and finish the job. It is gross and disturbing and excellent.

Some shit with this movie... Atkins is so over-the-top. Love that shit. First off, horrible doctor, father, husband. Major drunk. Brings a sixer or a 40 oz with him wherever he goes. Even drinks whilst on call. Chicks still love him though as he has banged at least four chicks in this movie and it would seem possibly every female that works at this hospital. The four chicks are the black nurse who he tells he should have married, the coroner whose ass he grabs, Kyes who is his wife or exwife or whatever, and the daughter of the crazy guy who is like 30ish years his junior. After he has boned her a couple of times he finally asks her how old she is. "Old enough," apparently.

The ending of this movie, spoiler, is also insane and has a lot going on and is also my favorite bit of the movie. It goes thus: Grimbridge was captured by the Silver Shamrock people and dude obviously goes to save her, escaping from his own captivity by die harding his way out of his one-room prison through the air vents. They sneak around the building by pushing a rack of masks so no one can see them which totally wouldn't work. That is when Atkins gets how to defeat the bad guys. The big plan, we see, is to randomly hit buttons on the big computer in the warehouse where Cochran and all his minions have gathered which brings up the commercial. Atkins then takes a box of the circuit logo things and dumps them on the guys, which leads to chaos and kills them all. Atkins and Grimbridge then take off to warn everyone but it turns out that she is a robet and attacks him causing them to crash the car and her to lose an arm. He beats her with a tire iron until her head pops off. He gets back in the car and is attacked by the severed arm. He pries it off eventually and then is immediately attacked by the headless body. Ridiculous. Finally he runs to a gas station and makes a call to god only knows who, whoever plays all the commercials on all the channels or something which obviously isn't a thing, telling whoever is one the other end to pull the Silver Shamrock ad as it is going to kill everyone. They get it done on two of the three networks but it starts to air on the third with Atkins screaming for them to "turn it off for god's sake, turn it off!!!" while children sit there and watch it right in front of him. Yeah, it's dark and bleak as hell.

MVP is... Drum roll... Michael Myers. Huh? Yep, that is right. No more of this bait and switch bull shit. This cemented that Michael Myers was the franchise and would be in every damn one of these flicks from here on out. They'll retcon him, kill him off, resurrect him, reboot him, and retcon him again if they have to but he will be in the movie. So no franchise as an anthology. Too soon. Too out there for 1982. Franchise financier Moustapha Akkad who had the rights to the character would make sure Myers was the killer in all the movies from then on out, even bringing him back, awkwardly, after he got his head chopped off in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. The rest is history and now we have all the sequels where Myers becomes more Jason like with each passing installment. So looking forward to that shit. Also, my dude Joe Bob Briggs did a sweet Monstervision for this installment of the franchise. Love the shit out of Joe Bob. Enjoy.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Dark Shadows is the greatest movie of all time

Saw Dark Shadows years ago at the Starlite Drive-In right har in Bloomington when my female companion was out of town. I liked it and, more importantly, Aberline, back when she was an only pupster, fucking loved it. I think she liked how quick paced it was and the killer soundtrack. We had a good time that night, me and her.

Anyway, now, since Rachel is so into vampire comedy horror, What We Do In the Shadows might be her all time favorite movie, we have another movie she has agreed to watch with me. Also, she has a much lower threshold for shit than I do so anything I get her to watch will have to be pretty decent. Otherwise that shit gets turnt off.

The movie is about this vampire named Barnabas Collins that is buried alive in the 1770s, escapes in the 1970s, goes back to back to his old castle home that is still standing and owned by his dysfunctional family. The rest of the movie is basically his interactions with them, the vampire lady that indirectly imprisoned him (they vampire hate fuck), and his wooing of this girl who looks like his long lost love and is like 18. Despite what the critics say, I thought it solid.


You're freaking out, man
Pros: Solidly funny. Christopher Lee is in it. Alice Cooper. Music in general. Love it when a dude from the past thrust into contemporary times.

Cons: This is around where we collective grew tired of Johnny Depp's shit. Here he is at his most Johnny Deppish. The movie is all over the place.

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Jinkies! I can't see without my glasses
Notes: Looks like every other Tim Burton movie I've ever seen. Danny Elfman music, too. And there is Johnny Depp. In the 1760s. He looks through some book on demonology. Gets to a bit about Mephistopheles. The M is the same as the McDonald's arches. Later there is a lame sort of joke when he is in the future about McDonald's and Mephistopheles where he is like, “what the fuck.” So he has this love of his life type chick, Josette, and then this side piece, Angelique Bouchard, who is a fucking vampire witch. When he falls in love with this Josette, Angelique makes his life real shit which culminates in enchanting Josette into committing suicide by jumping off a cliff. Overcome with grief, Depp jumps off, too. Face plant. Can't die because he is now a fucking vampire. The towns folk don't like that shit so they bury him. Again, can't die, which is eventually really going to suck. Cursed him good. That's some harsh shit when you think about it.

Low hanging fruit: Cooper as an ugly woman jokes
Skip to 1972. Meet this Victoria chick. Spitting image of Josette because, you know, she is the same fucking actress. We later see that she can talk to ghosts which made her parents think she is crazy. She is picked up by a van of hippies as she hitchhikes to her new job as a nanny at ole Banabas's (Depp) place. This is how every fucking horror movie stars. With hippies on a bus. I've been on that bus, man, it's not one you want to be on, even if no one dies. Eventually, Barnabas catches up with these folks and massacres them all. It's insane. This happens as he is trying to figure out how to be normal so he can get with Josette. If you want to seem normal, maybe slaughtering the shit out of a bunch of stoners is not the way to go. Or maybe it is. When he sees them, they are starting in with their hippy shit. Gilly from Game of Thrones is among them. They are maybe on acid and doing a jay. The one that looks like one of Rachel's exes is saying that the war in Vietnam is actually good because it is so bad that it'll be the last one. Yeah, no. I'd kill them too. But it's still not very cool of him. A total bummer, man.

Dog approved
Depp's got a weird vibe in this one. Looks like a weird child or pedophile or something. I think it's his caesar do and his lack of color. There are some interesting people in this movie. Helena Bonham Carter (every damn Tim Burton film), Jackie Earle Haley (Bad News Bears, Rorschach in Watchmen, Freddy in the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot), Christopher Lee, and Chloë Grace Moretz (the little girl in Kick-Ass) who ends up being a werewoof, Michelle Pfeiffer (who has aged very well), and then Depp's love interests whom I only sort of recognize (Eva Green and Bella Heathcote). Bonham Carter's character looks sort of like Velma from Scooby-Doo. Some of the other characters strangely look like other characters from the show as well. This is weird. I assume this must be intentional since they turn on an electric teevee machine and that show is on.

Anywho, two favorite scenes before everything goes down at the end include this weird (and PG) vampire-on-vampire sex scene between Depp and the chick who turnt him. They basically hate fuck with super powers. They get it on while flying around and cling to the ceiling and stuff. It's pretty cool and not something I think I've ever seen before. It's not hot though so no need to shield the youths. This chick, by the way, needs to fucking let it go. She again goes all ragey again when Depp loses interest.

The other scene comes as Depp is still trying to impress Victoria with how normal he is by holding a ball in order to get to know the people in their Maine town. The chick from Kick-Ass, Pfeiffer's daughter, who is like way over sexualized with Depp talking about how she needs to hurry up and get married before her uterus dries up—no one wants to hear that—suggests booking Alice Cooper who I am sure wasn't busy playing at giant arenas at the time or anything. The get “her” and Depp says Cooper is the ugliest chick he has ever seen which is LAME. But Cooper proceeds to rock out to like three songs. It's dope. Easily Abby's favorite part.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Blair Witch (2016) is the worst movie of all time

Been watching a lot of threequels lately. At movie three filmmakers either go over-the-top and flirt with comedy-horror (the Ghoulies going to college, Toxie going to work for Apocalypse Inc., Freddy saying “bitch” all the time) or reboot (see Jaws 3-D, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Jason wearing the hockey mask). This is in the reboot category and is totally unnecessary.

In this case, I remember liking The Blair Witch Project for nostalgia. Book of Shadows was shit. Then there was this one which basically remade the first one with better cameras and a stupid looking Jurassic Park dinosaur tree monster thing. There were like three ineffective jump scares and a horrible ending. I like pretty much everything; I did not like this movie.

Pros: 1 hour 29 min run time

Cons: Boring. I don’t give a fuck about the half dozen characters in this movie.

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain spoilers.  

Notes: The main character is the brother of the girl from the first one (she does not appear in the movie). He finds this YouTube video that makes him think his sister is still alive roaming the woods. She went missing when he was four, apparently, but now the dude looks like he is 35.

Main dude and three others go to the guy’s house who found the footage that became the first movie. He is like 12 so must have been an infant in 1999. Also, racist. He talks everyone into allowing him and his GF to go along. This guy gets more and more ratlike as the movie goes along. By the end he has a disgusting full beard even though the movie is over the course of three days. And he is a complete maniac.

Once they go out in the Blair Woods, or whatever they are called, which are time bending, supernatural, drone killing woods, one girl cuts her foot and something like enters the wound. Now this thing is like living inside her and likes comes out of the many gashes she picks up in the woods. Kept thinking that she would end up getting possessed by this magic bacteria and she would become a witch. But that didn’t happen and she eventually gets killed by the tree monster witch thing.

The rest of the movie was just, “hey, remember this from the first one?” Fucking sucked. Unfortunate as I like the first two and like the other work from director Adam Wingard whose work includes You're Next and The Guest which are both excellent.