Horror – Reel Film Chronicles

Cuckoo

Cuckoo | dir. Tilman Singer | 103 min Cuckoo is the kind of bonkers bizarre-concept movie that could only have been willed into being in the world of low-budget films. The land of big budget blockbusters is a hostile environment for this particular breed, and it’s exactly the kind of movie that needs time to properly gestate and thrive in a more welcoming habitat. Perhaps the only well-known production company consistently birthing low-budget horror films these days is Blumhouse, but even their seeming embrace of low-budget blood and gore is built on a model of success by dominating the lottery; you put out enough movies, eventually at least a couple are going to find an audience. This is also known in circles as the Netflix Gambit, though as part of their official creed, they boil everything down to the lowest common denominator of content as opposed to art or storytelling. And Cuckoo has a story to tell. At its heart, Cuckoo is a story about family, and no matter how weird the reveals get–and they do get pretty weird–this core…

Tremors

The moment I saw that a new 4K, special edition of Tremors was announced and coming out, I was online securing my preorder. It’s not often a film announcement gets me excited, but here I was, plunking down a relatively serious amount of money for a boxed edition of a film that I had honestly kind of forgotten about. Obviously, my childhood love for the film rushed forward and took charge: sometimes there are just those films that spur you to action, and Tremors is – apparently – one of those. Does anyone remember Betamax? The alternative format to VHS in the 80s and early 90s, Beta certainly had a comfortable spot in my families home: the basement television. Along with that top, spring loading player came a library of verifiable 80s movies and dubs, including a deep library of Looney Tunes cartoons, random Godzilla movies, a few films like Firebirds, and of course: Tremors. When that package arrived in the mail the other week, I quickly took in the nostalgia of the films imagery as presented in a boxed…

Underworld: Blood Wars

So in the previous Underworld film (Awakening) we advance the story along by the fact that humans have now discovered that both vampires and werewolves are a real thing, and with that, a number of doors open to some interesting antagonists. But Awakening didn’t even fulfill that, instead using the human factor as a catalyst for the events that went down. That’s fine. What’s not so fine is that Blood Wars completely disregards humanity. With this being the fifth entry, I would have hoped that there was a little more focus and foresight into either ending the series or expanding the world beyond the “simple” war between vampires and lycans. With Resident Evil’s fifth entry coming out around the same time (I think it was in the same month as Blood Wars, actually) I can’t help but draw a simple comparison in our protagonists journey: Alice’s (Resident Evil) story starts off with a lot of mystery and is neatly (and I use that word dubiously) explained and wrapped up the literally titled Final Chapter. Selene’s backstory is seemingly explored to its extent within the first two films and diminishes thereafter in each entry. Instead, those later Underworld movies introduce Selene’s daughter and other…

Underworld: Awakening

After taking a little break, Kate Beckinsale drops in from a rooftop to fill in the role of Selene again for this series fourth iteration, and I couldn’t be more excited. While I had some fun with Rise of the Lycans, it was ultimately a letdown as it retreads familiar story, so I was eager to pick up Selene’s story for Awakening. As the film’s prologue played out, I tried very hard to stop myself from questioning the direction that the filmmakers decided to take things, and by the end of the film I found surface level overall satisfaction, yet I couldn’t stop wondering if they had done things a bit differently. To be fair, I hate doing that. I hate thinking and advocating that the filmmakers could make a better story, or an entirely different film: I’m no screenwriter (nay, barely a writer at all) so I certainly couldn’t do any better, but that doesn’t stop me from spewing forth some my “better” film ideas. It also makes me feel icky in this day of age where the fandom stumbles into creating online movements toward studios to release director cut…

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

I always had the impression that Rise of the Lycans was a misfire in the Underworld series fueled by the loss of Kate Beckinsale. Maybe I was barely paying attention, but the advertising of the film definitely led me to believe that Kate was in the film, and when I discovered she was replaced by someone who looks pretty similar (Rhona Mitra), that I had lost most of my interest in going to see the prequel. The same thing happened in the previews of the film Doomsday, also starring Mitra and mistaken for Beckinsale, except that I couldn’t pass up Doomsday in theatres and was happy to revisit the film fairly recently to appreciate what a ride it was (and Mitra kicked a ton of ass in that film). This was my first viewing of Rise of the Lycans and I’m still not quite sure why this film exists. Didn’t we cover most of the ground here before in the previous two films? I always had the impression that Rise of the Lycans was a misfire in the Underworld series fueled by the loss of Kate Beckinsale. Maybe I was barely…

Pulse

Wow, I can’t recall the last time that I felt so much dread and unease in a horror film, but here we are with Kairo (Pulse), having me double check the shadows in my room and not only making sure that the doors in my apartment are closed, but also that they don’t have any red tape around them. Suffice to say I didn’t turn on my computer until the next day, in the safety of sunlight. We follow our characters as they navigate strange occurrences, including sightings of a recently deceased friend and a truly creepy website. Everything is driven forward by having as much information as the characters themselves: easily relatable as I never found myself questioning their behaviour: with a belief that ghosts don’t exist, who wouldn’t investigate strange markings on the wall of a friend’s home, or start asking around about how to rid yourself of some malware? These characters are never entirely sure what they’re dealing with, and the audience is given barely anything more, which I think makes the journey all the more terrifying.…