Here at Examined Worlds, er, we don't say stuff like, "here at Examined Worlds." But if we did, and if there was a "we" beyond you and me, dear reader, I'd say something like, "Here at Examined Worlds, we consider spooky season to be a state of mind, not a month on the calendar."
And that's why I'm posting Part Two of my "Mini-Reviews of Spooky Stuff for Spooky Season" in the middle of November, a week before US Thanksgiving (although I may revisit some of my Thanksgiving horror favorites soon!). Enjoy!
Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
As a huge fan of Guillermo Del Toro, I was super excited for this one on Netflix. And it does not disappoint! Each episode has a different director, bookended by intros from Del Toro himself. There's not just one, but two Lovecraft adaptations ("Pickman's Model" and "Dreams in the Witch House") and a few adapted from Del Toro's work ("Lot 36" and "The Murmuring"). I loved every episode. It's hard to pick a favorite, but one of the most memorable was "The Viewing" directed by Panos Cosmatos, who makes a TV episode just as weird as his films Beyond the Black Rainbow and Mandy, which I enjoy even while suspecting it's a "style over substance" kind of thing. I also really loved "Graveyard Rats" (yes, there are rats. Lots.), "The Autopsy" (with the incomparable F. Murray Abraham), and "The Outside" (directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night fame).
Nope
The longer the world goes without a book called Jordan Peele and Philosophy, the more I realize I may have to take up the task of editing such a volume myself. As a huge Jordan Peele fan, I saw Nope back when it was first released in theaters, but I didn't get around to reviewing it here. But I watched it again recently at home! And I still loved it! Like Peele's Us, Nope is a film I could think about for a long time. Is it a horror movie? A Western? Science fiction? A film about film? Something else? One thought I had the first time and even more the second: What is Nope saying about humanity's relationship with the non-human world, especially our desire to tame the untamable, exploit each other and the non-human creatures that share this universe with us? On my first viewing, I was a bit confused about what I was supposed to take away from Nope, but seeing it again I realized that there may be another genre working here that I had overlooked: tragedy.
The Munsters
Oh, Rob Zombie. I enjoyed the campiness of this reboot(?) of what was a pretty campy TV show that was already ancient when I was a kid. I think it had a plot, but I can't quite remember what it was. But a fun time was had, or I think so, anyway.
Ghost Stories
Rose Red
As a huge Stephen King fan, I've delved into his other miniseries not based on books: Golden Years and Storm of the Century. My campus library had the DVD of Rose Red, so I checked it out! (Why do DVDs look so bad on my new TV? Is it a sign I should stop watching DVDs?) Rose Red is something like Stephen King's attempt at a classic haunted house story more like Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House or the film House on Haunted Hill (see below) than his own The Shining. Add a dash of the Winchester Mystery House, mix it up with all the limitations of a 2002 TV miniseries, and you get Rose Red. A parapsychologist with a bit of an X-Files vibe invites various psychically sensitive people to spend the night in the haunted mansion Rose Red. And wouldn't you know it? Spooky stuff ensues. There are a lot of good creepy scares, good performances, and some bad early 2000's CGI. Rose Red is pretty good if you can get past the fact that this is TV more in the 1990's broadcast TV mode than in the mode of the new Golden Age of Television (which was either just beginning or about to begin in 2002, depending on who you ask).
Rosemary’s Baby
Another horror classic I either missed or don't remember. I almost didn't watch this, because director Roman Polanski has done some despicable things, but this was another library DVD so at least I wasn't paying for it or giving it streaming stats. I don't know. I still feel a bit icky about it. Ironically or not, the movie could be read as a study of how society gaslights women, like poor Rosemary with her, well, baby. There are some disturbing scenes, cult stuff, and then the ending... well, all the gaslighting it turns out had a nefarious, terrifying purpose.
The Beach House
I first saw this as part of the Chattanooga Film Festival a couple years ago, and it stuck with me since. And now it's on Shudder, so I watched it again recently. It remains one of my favorite examples of cosmic horror in recent years. It's not straightforwardly Lovecrafian per se, but the main character is an astrobiologist who talks about life on Earth and maybe elsewhere, while in some scenes the camera lingers on seafood and foamy beverages. The film does some great visual philosophical storytelling about life, the universe, and everything. On my second viewing, I noticed a lot more foreshadowing and little hints about what was happening. And the ending... I won't spoil it, but it has stuck with me as one of the best visual expressions of cosmic horror ever.
Certain Dark Things by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
This is may be the most fun and interesting vampire novel I've ever read. Check it out! See my full review, "Undead in Tenochtitlan."
Betaal
I continued to enjoy Netflix's Indian horror offerings with this four-episode limited series. A greedy developer is trying to dig a tunnel through a mountain for a highway, using a small military force to remove unwilling villagers. The soldiers think they're meeting with resistance from Maoist rebels, but it turns out the mountain is infested with zombies! And not just any zombies: these are the zombies of British soldiers from colonial times (specifically the Indian Rebellion of 1857), complete with their red coats, muskets, and cannons. The zombies are creepy, although they're a bit creepier before you see them up close (the make-up is just okay). There's some interesting commentary on the persistence of colonialism in postcolonial times: while the soldiers are fighting the zombie redcoats from the past, the wealthy Indian developer is engaging in a vicious type of neo-colonialism in the present.
The Conjuring 2
I mostly missed the Conjuring craze of the mid-2010's. If I'm being honest, the conceit of this series as being "based on a true story" is a bit obnoxious to me (even if there are ghosts, which I highly, highly doubt, there's no way these movies are getting at much of whatever that truth may be). But a few years ago I finally watched The Conjuring, and really enjoyed it despite my misgivings. And much the same continued with the sequel when I watched it a few weeks ago. In recent years I've also seen The Nun, The Curse of La Llorona, and at least one of those Annabelle movies. I can admit most of these movies are well made (at least the main Conjuring movies). I've got to hand it James Wan; he knows how to make a creepy movie. In this sequel the Wilsons are back to investigating ghost stuff, including a brief stint in Amityville of The ___ Horror fame, but mostly in the UK. It's really more of the same, but I do love the use of the English nursery rhyme "The Crooked Man," which always seemed creepy to me when I was a kid.
The Gate
I loved this movie when I was a kid in the late 80's, and I was thrilled to see it streaming on Shudder. How does it hold up? It's very 80's and features a very young Stephen Dorff in his first movie role. I totally see why I loved this. It's classic 80's Spielbergian kids-versus-the-unknown stuff with a dose of Stephen King. Maybe it's not quite on par with either Spielberg or King, but it's enjoyable enough. I love the charm of the menacing little claymation demons. And maybe the idea of opening a gate to another dimension in a suburban backyard is what set me up to enjoy cosmic horror as an adult. It might be a good one for introducing kids to horror today, at least if they can deal with 80's-ness unfiltered by the rosy nostalgia of Stranger Things.
Into the Dark: The Body and Uncanny Annie
I've enjoyed most of Hulu's Into the Dark horror movies I've seen (I have a bunch more on my list). A lot of them are centered on specific holidays, like Pilgrim for Thanksgiving and Pooka! for Christmas. At least two of them are about Halloween, so I figured I'd check them out.
The Body features a hitman who drags a body wrapped in plastic around town on Halloween, but since it's Halloween, everyone thinks it's part of his costume. It's fun, although some of the pop nihilism of it got some mild eye rolls from me. It was fun to see Harvey Guillén in a pre-What We Do in the Shadows role.
Uncanny Annie is about some college students playing a board game on Halloween. The game seems like harmless fun to pass the night as they mourn the loss of their friend, but then, well, the game is not what it seems as it turns more and more deadly. This isn't going to become a horror classic anytime soon, but it's a fun one to watch for spooky season.
Metamorphosis
There have been great horror movies from South Korea in the last few decades. Obviously you've got the sheer zombie fun of Train to Busan, but I've also loved other supernatural stuff like The Wailing and less-supernatural horror like I Saw the Devil. Like most everyone else (including the Oscars) I loved Parasite (Is it horror? Why not?). Anyway, I saw Metamorphosis on Shudder and figured I'd check it out. A family with some serious family drama is visited by the kids' uncle, who is a priest. And of course the priest is also an exorcist! (Keep in mind that South Korea is about 30% Christian). The fun thing is that the demon can take on the appearance of family members (also a plot point in Typewriter; see below). The demon just pushes the family's drama-buttons by impersonating them, and the whole thing gets nice and creepy. But maybe the scariest question of them all: Can you really trust anyone, even your own family?
Typewriter
My exploration of Indian horror continues! Thanks, Netflix! Typewriter is a limited series centered around a family moving to an old family mansion in Goa, which provides some great scenery and a culturally interesting setting as the only state of India with a large Christian population and influence from being a former Portuguese colony. (I briefly visited Goa many years ago, but I don't remember any ghosts.) The deceased grandfather wrote a best-selling novel about a ghost in the area, but of course it turns out this may not have been entirely fiction. There's also a delightful group of kids who form their own ghost hunting society, which is some fun Spielbergian/Kingian stuff (like The Gate; see above). Some ghosts in folklore from various parts of Asia can take on the appearance of living people (see also Bulbbul from Part One and South Korea's Metamorphosis; see above). Typewriter uses this ghosts-appearing-as-living-people to great effect. Overall the story seems a bit stretched over five episodes and occasionally rambles a bit into too many plot threads, but for the most part I enjoyed this one. It's also another one that might be fun for kids: not too scary, but with some good creepiness.
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Yet another horror classic that I either missed, or can't remember. All I really have to say about this one is: Vincent Price. Amazing. Price plays an eccentric rich guy who invites our cast of characters to spend the night in a haunted house. It's similar to The Haunting (1963, based on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). Apparently House on Haunted Hill was partly inspired by Jackson's book, which was published earlier in the same year the film was made. Anyway, House on Haunted Hill is a bit different: for example, the ambiguity about whether the haunting is real seems to go in a different direction. Overall pretty good stuff. And did I mention Vincent Price at the top of his game? Awesome. Maybe I'll check out the 1999 remake sometime, even with its lack of Vincent Price.
Books of Blood, Vol. 1 by Clive Barker
I feel like I must've read some of these stories in my earlier phase of Clive Barker fandom in the 90's, but I can't remember if I did or if I just loved Hellraiser and his weird dark fantasy novels like The Great and Secret Show. Anyway, I saw this new edition at the book store as a tie-in with Hulu's Books of Blood, which uses Barker's "The Book of Blood" as a framing narrative (I did watch the movie a few years ago and remember liking it). I didn't get around to writing a full review of Goodreads, but here's what I said:
Damn. If I needed a reminder of how much I love Clive Barker, this was it.
Barker gets compared with Stephen King, which is maybe inevitable as they're both huge horror icons, but I feel this is a bit unfair to Barker, who's really just a whole other thing. While King delves into fantasy plenty, I feel like Barker is maybe more firmly planted in the dark fantasy genre, not to mention much gnarlier and sexual with a style all his own.
I'll have to track down the other volumes of his short stories. I loved his 2015 book The Scarlet Gospels (a sequel of sorts to Hellraiser, but doubling down on the fantastic otherworldly elements), I enjoyed Weaveworld, and I've thought about revisiting his Book of the Art duology, which I loved in my late teens and early 20s.
Honorable Mentions
A few other things I watched, but this post is getting long enough...
The Faculty
When a Stranger Calls
Grindhouse: Planet Terror
Army of the Dead
Stree
Phantasm III
Hauntings in Progress…
Here's some stuff I've started, but haven't finished. Spooky season lives on!
Folklore
Bite Size Horror
The Midnight Club
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
No comments:
Post a Comment