Review – Page 7 – Reel Film Chronicles

The Descent: Part 2

Any sequel to The Descent was going to have a hard time, so expectations going into this were fairly low. Indeed, I didn’t even know this movie existed; I had seen The Descent at home long after release and it became an instant classic and put away as a film too scary to watch again. Not necessarily because the horror of the creatures, but moreso the claustrophobic passages and situations the women find themselves in. I shudder just thinking about it. But, as I get older and a tiny bit more brave I found myself needing to revisit the original before tackling the sequel, and I’m happy to report that I enjoyed it even more the second time around. Depending on which version of The Descent (having different endings) you saw/remember, Part Two will begun with some confusion, but this is easily remedied with a quick web query. Unfortunately the bewilderment doesn’t stop there: Sarah – our protagonist and sole survivor of the first – is found two days after the events of the first and is immediately brought into the…

The Changeling

Hopefully you don’t mind a little context for this. I’ve tasked myself over the past few months to follow along with The Evolution of Horror podcast series as they take on the various genres of horror; first was slashers, and now we’re onto ‘ghosts’ and as a result, I’ve been watching a decent number of older ghost-related movies (as evidenced by a few quick entries on this very site). There’s been one problem though: I’ve found my mind wandering and quickly becoming bored with many of these films; I felt especially bad for The Haunting, which is highly spoken of but I could barely sit through it without checking my phone and yes, even excusing myself from the room brush my teeth during one particular scene. So I was nervous to continue on this trend, less I don’t give these movies the respect they deserve – although honestly some of them may not: nobody is saying they all have to be good. My friend suggested turning my phone off while the movie is on, so I took it a step…

Halloween (2018)

{field 2} | dir: {field 3} | {field 4}m Halloween is one among many John Carpenter masterpieces that he has deigned to bestow up the world, and I have, of course, watched it many times. The rest of the sequels… not so much. As part of my annual horror movie marathon this October, I decided to get caught up the rest of the Halloween series. Much to my dismay, I discovered that much like the Friday the 13th series, the sequels to Halloween represented at best diminishing artistic and entertainment returns and at worst head-scratchingly terrible movies, the scripts for which probably wouldn’t receive a passing mark if they had had been submitted as creative writing assignments in a grade 4 class. Yes, I’m looking at you Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Halloween: Resurrection. These are sequels that are so bad that it felt like they were made specifically to insult and alienate fans of the series (or at least of the original film). The Halloween sequels seemed to go off the rails almost immediately, adding increasingly nonsensical aspects to the Michael Myers mythology that made the character less impactful and…

The Lighthouse

It’s been nary twenty four hours since somberly leaving the theatre after watching The Lighthouse and I’m still unsure what I just witnessed, but I do have a feeling I just participated in something unique, and maybe even great. Throughout the nearly two hour runtime of the film, I was mesmerized from beginning to end, and there were many moments that have stuck with me, with noted significance on the performances by Patterson and Dafoe: they were incredible. Dafoe’s Thomas Wake has a few close shot monologues that had me pouring over every word, every movement of his face and terrified as I gazed into those unblinking eyes. Pattinson plays Winslow, a newcomer in the lighthouse keeping world: he is adamant to perform his duties by the book, but is quickly (or maybe it’s slowly) rolled over by Wake’s relentless task-driving and unwillingness to adhere to anyone’s rules but his own. Wake keeps the upper portion of the lighthouse off limits to Winslow, which – combined with living in such small quarters with someone and a belligerent seagull – drive…

Leatherface

Just a few short weeks ago I launched into my journey to view all the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films; it’s a project like those that came before it for Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but I was not prepared for how many Chainsaw movies there actually were. Or even how the “timeline” of these may be more messed up than the Halloween series. Alas, the final movie was upon me and I was looking forward to wrapping this series up, as I became nauseated with the ups and downs of quality throughout. Leatherface does away with the Massacre moniker presumably since it’s (yet another) origin story of our miscreant psychopath, but I do feel as though it would belong: it’s firmly planted in the “family comes first at all costs” that the entire series has been consistent with. In an effort to differentiate or perhaps re-invent the series, this movie tries to play tricks on you but to no real consequence; the story is familiar as we follow a group of young adult killers escaping…

Texas Chainsaw 3D

Regretfully, I did not get to see this movie in theatres in proper 3D, and it’s too bad: I feel as though the horror-style 3D effects that are so common in the genre when it utilizes the technology are so over-the-top that they add a layer of cheese and fun that other movie genres cant’ get away with. That being said, it’s still blatantly obvious when these effects are going all in while watching in regular 2D, and I can’t help but chuckle every time. Oddly enough, this entry in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series picks up exactly where the original left off – then advances some twenty or thirty years (the time passed is messed up anyway). So many of the other entries pick up much later or re-tell the original in a different way, so it was refreshing to see some of the actors even come back to complete some scenes for the aftermath of the climax of the 1974 original. However, as we advance to modern times the movie feels like a lacklustre attempt; it falls behind the two…

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

I was reminded of watching Ouija, followed by it’s prequel and remarking that the prequel ended up being much better than the first film. Going in with that logic, I was expecting a similar treatmeant but alas, The Beginning is not a better film than the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake from just a couple of years previous. I see why this movie was made but don’t really see any reasoning on why this movie exists on screen. R Lee Ermey gets a lot more screen time here and I can’t complain about that, nor really the film as a whole. One thing that really stuck with me in a review I read was how this film makes Leatherface “a less sympathetic character” and it’s spot on: the previous films explored different sides of Leatherface, to a point where he was an ineffective killer and easily persuaded/scared by his own family. He didn’t choose to be the way he was: he was born into that family and it dictated all his actions; he was almost endearing. This prequel removes all that character development…

Gemini Man

I got a weird feeling from Gemini Man, and I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the high frame rate (HFR) 3D, although you have to take into consideration the way the film was shot when assessing the overall score, I will try to separate them as best I can. There’s nothing much to be said for the plot or story of this film: you’ve seen the trailers so you know the core premise that Will Smith’s uber-agent character is cloned and they must face off against one another. The way they put them together is a bit cliched as you roll your eyes gently (but not too much because you don’t want to miss the incredible 3D effects) as the film takes its sweet time getting to where you know it’s going. Immediately after coming out of the theatre I found myself picking apart many of the small things in the film which never feels good, but in this case those small things seemed to be related to plot points that the characters kept mentioning in dialogue but seemed superfluous to the…

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake (or maybe this is a reboot) feels much more natural than some of the other horror franchises I’ve gorged myself with in the past year, like Friday the 13th or even A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I have to attribute it to the fairly inconsistent sequels and the years that separated them. Whereas with something like Friday the 13th, they managed to keep some semblance (albeit VERY loose) of continuity in the numerous sequels, Texas Chainsaw didn’t adhere to anything as there seemed to be soft reboots/remakes throughout without sticking necessarily to a stringent timeline. This 2003 reboot takes the biggest leap of all the sequels and firmly plants itself as a chainsaw for the modern era. It doesn’t transplant our massacre to modern times, instead recreating the timeline in the mid-70s, and upping the terror by splashing ludicrous amounts of gore and making more impactful shocking moments than the original sequels could muster. At first I thought this was a relatively generic slasher film that just so happened to star our beloved Leatherface and…

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

Not only does Renee Zellweger appear in this atrocious entry in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, but Matthew McConaughey appears in full force as well: they very well could be the best thing about this film. McConaughey plays Leatherface’s brother Vilmer and does in fact surpass the popular chainsaw wielding villain in terms of scares. Zellweger doesn’t have much to do here but play the classic final girl trope as best as anyone and is in fact, the only character in the film that passes as a decent person. The rest of the characters are all awful and the film doesn’t skirt around it at all: you find yourself rooting for both good and bad folk to die gruesome deaths, but yet the film doesn’t really deliver there either. I read somewhere (and I apologise as I didn’t bookmark it) that perhaps the film is a commentary on the franchise itself, if not horror movies in general during this time frame: villains are reduced to a fraction of what they were before (as Leatherface is the weakest part of the…