2021 Moviefest Pairs: Week 2
We continued horror movie pairs into the middle of October with the only film I had not seen before its scheduled moviefest date. There’s Someone Inside Your House is a hot mess of a film that attempted to conjure a story from pretty much every social justice issue that is clogging up the media. White privilege, racism, genderism, buried secrets – even defund the police. But the film doesn’t give us anything to tie it all together except a masked killer with a knife. By the time you get to the totally predictable ending you’ll be wanting those 90 minutes back. The title has little to do with the film’s shallow plot, and both have even less to do with horror. I gave it a skull and a half before seeing the 4.8 rating on IMDb – which is not a great score but totally overrated. So…I checked RT and saw that the audience liked it as much as I did. I hope you started with The Cabin in the Woods and called it early, but if not, I apologize for the recommendation. But that is the genre. Some hits, some misses, and sometimes some really bad misses. Move on.
For family movie night we paired Haunter with Coraline for a sure thing. I never see Haunter on any Halloween movie lists and that is unfortunate. I have liked every Abigail Breslin film I have seen and this is no exception. Bonus points for the Peter and the Wolf album that her character practices clarinet to. It is a throw back to a childhood memory when fairy tales were on vinyl. Coraline is a stop-motion animated film based on Neil Gaiman’s dark fantasy novel and broke ground in the style of movie making. If you didn’t know better, you might think it is a Tim Burton film. The two movies share a director, so that is the connection. But Coraline is Neil Gaiman all the way.
For the first choose your man night, I started with The Bye-Bye Man, a totally watchable film that isn’t very good. It has decent hook, opening with Psychotic Reaction and an intense scene, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. The characters aren’t that interesting and the story is never developed. It’s just a random boogey man without even a weak legend to give it structure. Still, I will probably watch it a half dozen times before rerunning The Empty Man. It took me a several tries to get through this film’s utterly confusing plot, starting with a 25-minute prologue that really has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Once I figured that out, I was liberated from searching for what I had missed and I finished the film in silent boredom. You may find it the moody, elevated, lovecraftian horror experience that some fans described, but the audience was mostly with me.
The Descent has an opening hook that draws you in during the prologue, but unlike The Empty Man, it is relevant to the plot. I found myself taking deep breaths as the cavers went deeper and deeper underground in a shared claustrophobia. I had the same feeling when I first saw As Above, So Below, so the pairing was a match. The Descent spawned a lesser sequel that I skipped, as I do most sequels. Unless they are Halloween sequels, and then I am all in no matter how cheesy.
An early, unexpected snowstorm and all-day power outage put me off my game for a few days, so I confused game night with the Constantine and 6 Souls paring, and missed Random Acts of Violence completely. Mine Games (aka The Evil Within) follows a group of friends stuck in a time loop that plays out differently each time until they can break the cycle. It got terrible ratings on RT, the character’s are admittedly weak, and much like Bye-Bye Man, there is no what or why to the cycle. I totally get if it’s not your jam, but I find my self watching it and I have no excuse.
Gerald’s Game is the first of two films directed by Mike Flanigan based on a Stephen King novel. The other one is Dr. Sleep and it is equally well done. Flanigan’s favorites are among the case including his wife, Kate Siegal, who looks realistically pregnant as young Jessie’s mother because she was, .
That wraps up week two and we are well on our way to a moviefest record as we head into the third bingeable weekend of October and cross the half-way point in the season.