Iffy
Recent Horrors 😕
by
Kristin Battestella
Whether
it's long form television, scary franchises, or famous faces
onscreen, these recent horror legs leave a little something to be
desired.
It
was Okay
Bad Samaritan –
Upsetting horses, whips, and screams open this 2018 thriller directed
by Dean Devlin (Geostorm)
starring David Tennant (Doctor
Who) and Robert Sheehan
(Red Riding).
Older cars, computers, photography, and above the garage starving
artists set the scene for our valets nicking from customers while
they dine. It's a smooth operation – lifting trinkets, watches,
small items that won't be missed. Why steal the gift card when you
can scan it and they'll never know? Our burglars argue whether to con
a decent family compared to the snobby rich before maneuvering around
security systems, cameras, and dobermans. Viewers get to know these
supposed crooks just trying to maximize any angle they can – Irish
still struggling in corporate America while the bizarrely sans accent
Tennant talks the expensive talk in his sweet Maserati. Coordinated
snooping in his tricked out mod house to lift credit card numbers
provides ominous phone action, handcuffs by the bed, and doors with
seriously heavy locks. Encrypted passwords, suspect checkbooks, and
smartphone flashlights lead to chains, horse bits, chairs bolted to
the floor, and victims bound and gagged. Skeleton keys worn around
the neck and cameras observing his quarry at all times elevate the
suspense alongside designer tools, clean rooms, lye, serrated blades,
and sinister saws. How can our robbers call the police without
incriminating themselves? Close calls, regrets about the scheme, and
fear of jail time or deportation bind our small timers against the
twisted but suave serial killer methods, and stakeouts reveal
mistakes made and a victim not where she is supposed to be. Our
sociopath seeks to cleanse vulgar corruption at his secluded cabin
containing torture devices, spurs, and cages. It's all about dressage
and training to achieve the superior spark – just like a horse.
Detective searches and police interviews come up empty thanks to coy
clean ups, dismissing the bruises, lashes, and photographic proof.
Our eponymous con turned do gooder becomes the prey – hacked,
followed, and threatened with all manner of technology used against
him. Sophisticated gadgets, vehicles, needles, and trackers implicate
the petty thief, who turns to the seemingly uninterested FBI to file
a missing persons report. Although he usually can't stand the low
class squalor that's beyond “correction,” our killer's impressed
with who's come to play in his sandbox. Terrorized families, job
firings, social media blackmail, and presentation exposures help
break the spirit as collared women are trained to go back to the cell
and lock the door. The working class chaos and psycho trust fund
order escalate to back alley attacks, violence down the stairs,
baseball bats, gunshots, and explosions. So long as it isn't
inelegant, who's next is going to watch, and snowy raids,
jurisdiction technicalities, and shovel beatings lead to where all
the gory bodies are buried. After resorting to the same old twisting
mustache villain revelations, weak one on one fights, and action
chases through the woods while the FBI sits on their hands waiting
for a warrant; the finale does unfortunately loose some steam. The
script never quite decides if we are inside the head of one or the
other and doesn't always equally balance both sides. Overall this
feels more like a nineties late night thriller – which is fine so
long as viewers don't expect outright horror or thrills a minute –
and fans of the cast can enjoy the careful orchestration and chilling
interplay here.
Disappointing
Insidious: Chapter 3 – I liked
the First Two in this franchise, but with releases so few and far
between, it seems this 2015 prequel featuring Lin Shaye has been
largely forgotten. Things here aren't off to a good start either with
voices so, so low and music so, so loud. Unnecessary crescendos and
warping toppers don't add atmosphere like the cluttered, old
fashioned house and requests for a reading on a girl's late mother.
Our psychic is out of the business and doesn't want to call on the
dead because someone nasty may answer. Typical morning kitchen banter
with dad Dermot Mulroney (My
Best Friend's Wedding)
restarts the story in a fancy apartment building complete with a
bratty, ultimately irrelevant brother, hip friends with pink hair,
and a kooky old black neighbor who dies first of course. Daughter
Quinn rehearses but botches an audition thanks to bright spotlights
and creepy shadows in the theater. Car accidents that should be
shocking are again more so in volume than horror, but the hospital
rush, flat lines, and fractures lead to a blue limbo and scary demon
growls. Two broken legs make for sleeplessness and ringing hand bells
(super loud naturally), a trapped in bed awkward amid thumps on the
ceiling, shadowy arms, and phantom figures by the window. Locked
basements, dark stairwells, parlors with skulls and crystal balls –
the lone lady psychic fears and silence are much better than making
the audience jump with a loud noise. It's weird, too, that a
different horror series with astral demon action resorts to standard
teen issues. While texting on an old slide keyboard phone and fake
graphics are meant to indicate this is a decade ago, primitive video
chat is used to great effect with the caller asking who's standing
next to the would be victim when no one's there. Moved wheelchairs,
figures behind the lace curtains, and looking under the bed frights
increase as the intruder draws the shades, shuts the door, and flings
the girl off the bed for more injuries and terror. This raspy
breathing, mask wearing demon is pretty strong, jumping out four
story windows and mystically transporting the wheelchair bound for
abandoned fifth floor races. He's luring faceless ingenues to Room
514 yet no one researches the history of this creepy art deco
building, and it takes gooey footprints on the ceiling for Dad to get
a clue. It's easy to blink and miss dialogue here, questionable
internal logic makes things confusing, and exposition about suicides
and the reasons behind Elise giving up readings are left to
exposition when we could have experienced the characterization. The
living must search in the dark, resisting the lure to join dead
relatives as evil follows them back from the astral underworld. The
foggy corridors and red elevators are creepy, but it takes over an
hour to get proactive against the demons – random scares, ghostly
girls, and fun house horrors waste time while distorted frights
predicting the First Insidious
remain
too brief. Ghost hunters
found on the internet are called in complete with hidden cameras and
night vision to record the flickering power, cracking bones, chilling
possessions, and eyeballs in the throat. Seeing Elise overcome her
issues to bring the psychic team together should have been the focus
here, but for everything good, something cliché interferes. With the
teen in trouble start and the psychic battles in the end, this feels
like two different movies culminating with typical rattling
furniture, whooshing action, and good ghosts conveniently coming
through in the nick of time. Although this is late night watchable,
there was potential for something much more than jump scares and
gotchas.
I
Couldn't Take It
Scream
Queens– This
thirteen episode 2015 Fox horror comedy debut opens with 1995
blood and babies in the bathtub ruining the jams to TLC before
today's couture sleep masks and a millennial fast narration waxing on
the superior social class, house slaves, and bulimia vomit on the
carpet. Our immediately unlikable, elitist, don't feel sorry for poor
little rich girl Queen of Kappa Kappa Tau Emma Roberts (The Blackcoat's Daughter)
provides the breakneck history to match the quick editing and
constantly on the move camera. Not so clean dean Jamie Lee Curtis
(Halloween)
threatens
to revoke the house charter, leading to confrontations,
extreme clique behavior, and alumni still trying to be hip. Red devil
mascots and white robes build atmosphere alongside fearful pledges,
killer pranks, and faces scorched in hot vats. Plebs wanting cool
boyfriends named Chad go along with dumping a body – sharing in the
sisterly secrets with blood oaths found online. Exaggerated zooms and
screams over bloody faces peeling off create camp horrors while
deadly encounters put the killer and victim face to face but texting
rather than speaking or fleeing. Here, victims tweet for help rather
than shout for police who don't believe there's an emergency thanks
to howling hag legends and people taking selfies with dead bodies cum
décor. Eerie basement accidents and bodies in the attic connect to
fatal sorority secrets while eating cotton balls and tasers to the
privates begat candlelight vigils and crocodile tears Visits to lux
families of the deceased reveal holiday trysts, and film classes
featuring Texas
Chainsaw Massacre
wink at the slasher genre before fresh slicing and dicing to the
upbeat music. Commentaries and home videos wax on how Halloween lets
one with the right dumb luck costume get away with anything, and
pledges sharpening knives and carving pumpkins talk about making
sausages out of the dead to sell them at the county fair. Camper
frights and trailer park snooping pieces together what happened in
sorority twenty years ago, but threats to call the news are more
fearful than the authorities. Unfortunately,
everything here is so gosh darn busy
with tell not show exposition in every walk while they talk on the
move scene. The far, far too many characters go overboard on bitchy
freeze frame zingers amid racist, disabled, Asian, and lesbian
insults. Singer Nick Jonas plays into the gay stereotypes, and
there's a difference between having nasty characters mock the deaf or
queer and using the demeaning and homophobia for laughs. Overused
corporate radio and existential
woke quips come at espresso speed alongside superficial, pissy,
unnecessary monologues. If the sardonic was taken down a notch,
viewers could appreciate the mood. However, the humor in death
detracts from the horror. Are we supposed to laugh at the squirting
sliced arms or
enjoy the demented slasher references? We can't appreciate whether
the horror is straight or sarcastic because the
decision to chuckle at the preposterous has already been made for the
audience. Library
research and juicy reveals are withheld until convenient –
happening in the past with brief flashbacks for the viewer after the
fact. We're not in on the discovery and have no time for the details
thanks to the random plot. Each brisk, forty-four minute entry feels
like empty calories with Thanksgiving appropriation, “ghosts” of
not dead characters, and scary storytelling complete with cliché
re-enactments. Every person has to have the last comeback, me me me
repeating the costumed encounters, killer chats, and double crosses.
Pleb
makeovers, questionable paternity, pacts to become alibi buddies, and
deaths ruled suicide in spite of footprints and slit throats can't
hide the killer giveaways slicing up the instantly dated Backstreet
Boys wannabes in white.
Despite pink furs and chandeliers, the grandeur is an ugly Clueless
cosplay,
and fine references to Sixteen
Candles jar
against the text speak. Who is ultimately the audience here –
today's hipsters who will laugh or adults
who understand the horror homages? Between creating writers Ryan
Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan also directing alongside
Bradley Buecker and Michael Uppendahl, perhaps there are too many
male cooks in this kitchen. Like their American
Horror Story, this
has the cast and the opportunities, but the cool crescendos and
uneven pacing toy with the action
to arbitrarily fit network episodes. This should have been a three
night October event with all the desperate hip and trying to be funny
falling flat excised. Tame blood and gore and pretentious trash talk
in lieu of actual cursing come off false, leaving the commentary
laden dialogue more obnoxious than witty. I skipped around and didn't
miss a thing, not liking anyone or caring enough about the killers to
continue. Quirky security guard without a gun Niecy Nash (Reno
911)
could have carried all the humor needed, and with her dark suits,
silver crop, and morning scotch, not to be underestimated Curtis
stands out from the sheep. Seeing the series from her
perspective would have been much more interesting!
2 comments:
I could not make it past one epsiode scream queens
Hi Bob!
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time out to comment!
I hate being mean, but Scream Queens was obviously not for me. Trouble is, I don't think it knew who it's audience was either. :/
Onto the next horror show!
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