I don’t do too much for Halloween on the blog. Yeah, I had my looks at the Universal Monsters, but after that, nada. Instead of going with some theme of certain horror movies, I’m just gonna watch some random scary stuff for the rest of the month. Some of these are ones that I’ve already seen like my first pick for the spooky time. Others are ones that I’ve never watched before like Flatliners, aka “The Movie that made Folk Believe Schumacher Could Direct a Batman Movie.” I might as well get the mixture of Alien, The Shining, and Hellraiser out of the way first though.
Event Horizon
Event Horizon’s a Paul W.S. Anderson gig. Imagine someone combining aspects of Alien, The Shining, and Hellraiser into 90 minute flick. The result would be something that’s okay at best. The movie revolves around an experimental ship called the Event Horizon. It disappears in space after an accident and reappears around Neptune seven years later. A crew is tasked to go out and find out what happened to the ship and its crew. Accompanying them is the ship’s creator, Dr. Weir. When they get there, they find that not all is as it seems as the ship makes the crew hallucinate horrid things. When it’s revealed that the Horizon was trapped in a hellish dimension for seven years, the crew does their best to get out of dodge.
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| One should wonder how Dr. Weir got the idea for his hellish-looking gravity drive. What use do five foot-long spikes serve? |
This was a fine movie. As I said above, it’s like a mixture
of some big horror movies. It takes the spaceship shenannigans of Alien, the
mind games of The Shining, and the hellish gore of Hellraiser. The cast is
pretty good with Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Issacs, and a few others
turning in good performances. The suspense in the first half is pretty good. They
don’t know anything about the ship, and Weir, who’s not the best with folk, doesn’t
have the answers. While most of the CG is dated, the practical stuff holds up. I’m
not a gorehound, but when it comes in the latter half, it doesn’t let up. Heck,
this movie was supposed to be more gory, but most of it had to get cut out.
As for my dislikes, the movie does feel brief. As I said above,
most scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. A 2+ hour movie ended up being
90 minutes, and while I can understand about the gore, I don’t know why
character moments got cut out. We only got into the head of a couple crew members.
Also, the ending isn’t that great. Even some acting can be a bit off for a more
serious sci-fi horror flick. Other than those things, this was nice. I will say
that if you’re not into gore, I advise caution.
Flatliners
By the way, this the original with Kevin Bacon and Julia Roberts. The movie revolves around a group of medical students who want to see what comes after death. They basically medically induce death on themselves for science. While they come back to the land of the living, they also start to experience hallucinations of past memories. I can see why someone though Joel Schumacher may have been a good choice for a Batman movie. Seriously, this thing is pretty moody and visually striking. Maybe if the WB wasn’t so hellbent on making the later Batman movies so campy, we might have gotten some truly good stuff. I say this while liking Batman Forever and bits of Batman and Robin.
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| It's official... Joel Schumacher likes Klingons! |
Anyway, I thought that this was a good movie. It’s more into
psychological horror than outright gore, so sorry, goreheads. The only gory
thing here would be Keifer Southerland getting the crap beat out of him by a
dead 10 year-old. Each student experiences different things like one dude
starts to see all the ladies he… taped. Yeah, one of them was a freaky perv. The
others saw memories of some trauma they caused or someone else caused, and they
try to work through what happened. I thought the cast was awesome with Keifer
Sutherland, Julia Roberts, and Kevin Bacon turning in good performances. Other than
some slowness here and there and that pervy dude, I liked this one.
Boo! A Madea Halloween
This 2014 movie revolves around Madea and her friends babysitting her nephew’s unruly teenage daughter. It doesn’t help that it’s Halloween and that the university’s frat house is having a big party. The annoying teen and her friends decide to go to the party and play some pranks on Madea. A lot of hijinks ensue as Madea and her friends deal with the girl, her friends, and some pretty annoying college students.
After seeing this, I can see why I haven’t watched too many later
Tyler Perry movies. Liz got me roped into this one since I’ve kinda stayed away
from it. I can still watch some of the earlier TP movies and plays fine since
they had a certain kind of charm to them. Heck, even Acrimony and “Ashtray,
B****!” (I can’t remember the name) have something about them, and they ain’t
good either. This one takes the cake. The only thing I do like about it is that
it can be funny at times. That helped me and Liz (who liked it more than I did)
get through it.
Other than some okay humor, this sucked. Just about every
character was annoying here from Madea to that annoying frat dude. I think one
thing that helps the Madea movies be better is when she’s the only funny thing
about them. She balances out the more serious moments. Here, everyone’s in on
the humor and not in a good way. The humor is either too mean-spirited or just
lasts too long. I think the only character I liked was the annoying teen’s
short but cute friend. As for the story…, what’s that? There is none. I ain’t
got more to say about this one other than it’s not good. If you do watch it,
watch it with a group.
Dark Shadows (TV show)
Finally, we have an oldie here. I wanted to watch some spooky while I had Andy in my arms, so I looked at the first three episodes of Dark Shadows. All I know of Dark Shadows was that weird Johnny Depp movie that most folk don’t like. The show is about the Collins residence in America. Things go for a turn when Barnabas Collins, a vampire, is unleashed by a grave robber trying to look for riches. For now, he’s passing himself off as a descendant from England. Where it goes next, I’ll find out soon.
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| Nah, I don't see the similarities! |
The show’s okay so far. It’s more etched in Gothic horror like a classic Universal Monster movie. You’d think Bela Legosi would be knocking around somewhere, but we have Barnabas Collins, who so far, is the only thing memorable about the show so far. The other characters are okay and some acting is lacking. Other than that, I think I’ll stick around with the show for a while. I don’t know if I can finish the show though. 1,225 episodes… Dang!
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Well, that’s all I have for now. I know there are some other horrors I want to get to before the month ends. For now, Peace, God Bless, and don’t trust any engineer who wants to create a spaceship that looks like a design from H.R. Giger.
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