Month: May 2018

You’re Next

Image result for you're next posterThis month, I participated in Grim Magazine’s Slasher Madness bracket, where I, obviously, picked You’re Next to win.  But, despite making it to the final showdown, it lost by a large margin.  That leads me to assume one thing; not enough people have seen it.

I stumbled across this slashic by having my ear to the horror grindstone and it both revitalized my slasher fandom and skyrocketed me into becoming the massive fan of the blogged about, The Guest.

Erin is on her way to her new fiance’s family during their anniversary celebration.  The nerves of ‘meeting the parents,’ are taken to new heights when the family finds itself under attack by masked killers.

What this movie does painfully right is take us back to the slasher basics by mixing the right amount of camp and gore into a new story about a ‘cabin in the woods’ massacre.  It keeps it simple, doesn’t set out to do anything it can’t accomplish, and therefore leaves the viewer satisfied in the way you were after the seminal slashers of old.  Final girls have had such a great boom this decade, and Erin is no exception.  Yes, this was written and directed by men, but Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett are great at handling their female leads, something they double down on in The Guest.

Great if you liked: The Guest, The Strangers, Funny Games, A Clockwork Orange, The Purge, Hush, Vacancy, Black Christmas, Halloween, Friday the 13th

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John Dies at the End

Image result for john dies at the end posterSorry, twitterverse, this movie’s title is a spoiler.  You’ll also never believe what happens at the end of The Sixth Sense.

This movie is weird as hell.  Is that enough of a selling point?  I immediately fell in love with this for being so strange and weird and fun and remember it being an hours long universe building mind trip, but it’s 100 minutes long.

After a party, Chase wakes to discover is friend, John, is missing.  After getting some mysterious phone calls from what appears to be a clairvoyant John, Chase sets on a mission to solve the mystery of the new drug, “soy sauce,” and save the planet from what might be an otherworldly, sinister force.   Along the way, he encounters ghost hunters, evil beings, and maybe an alternative universe or two. This movie takes you so many places, you will honestly feel both older and revitalized by the end of it.

Told by Chase to a reporter, the transcendence of a linear timeline in the plot is stacked with non-linear story telling, and it’s used with careful purpose.  Watching the level headed Chase transform throughout the narrative via his own telling is relateable enough to have you wonder if you’d, you know, hunt ghosts or whatever.

In the same way you fell for the “whatever is going on,” weirdness of Dirk Gentley, you’ll fall for this.  You will spend some time trying to reason the transcendence of space and time, and ultimately land on having a great time.

Great if you liked: Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Service, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Scanner Darkly, Bubba Ho Tep, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Phantasm.