Delayed Reaction: They Look Like People

Premise: A man believes he is receiving messages about a coming demonic invasion of the Earth and starts preparing for it.

 

This is a great way to do a lot with very little. This couldn’t have been an expensive movie. The cast are all new to me. It’s shot in a lot of simple locations. Not many effects. It still works though, because it uses the classic horror trick of using what you don’t know or can’t see for the tension. It sounds odd to say that I wasn’t sure whether Wyatt was mentally ill or there really was about to be a demonic invasion. It’s a movie though, so both feel equally possible. The movie is effective enough at building the tension that I wouldn’t’ve been disappointed if it turned out the invasion was real.

 

As is though, I prefer how things do play out. It turns out Wyatt really does have a mental problem. The film pulls of a difficult balance of respectfully depicting mental illness while maintaining thrills. It’s really quite impressive. I’m also a fan of them not padding out the movie to 90 minutes for no reason. It’s a brief 80 and that feels right. Hopefully we get to see what writer/director/producer Perry Blackshear can do with more of a budget eventually.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Pontypool

Premise: A DJ and station crew doing a night show in a small Canadian town investigate a developing story of a virus infecting the town through words.

 

I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand a lot of this movie, but I still loved it. This is a cerebral horror movie. There are some effects thrown in but most of the scares are achieved through words. Similar to The Vast of Night, I love how effective just hearing a scary story can be. Most of the movie, Gran Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is getting a slow trickle of information from a series of calls and odd occurrences. By the time he and his station manager (Lisa Houle) actually encounter the infected, I’m so on edge that they are terrifying without any effects or tons of makeup.

 

I’m pretty confused about a lot of the stuff about the virus. So, it’s transmitted by words. Certain words for certain people. It only affects English for some reason. The infected seek out others to transmit it to verbally or they die. That part I think I get. I don’t understand much of anything about the solution they discover. Speak nonsense and try to redefine words? OK, sure. I’m ok not getting it. It makes it like Primer. I’m eager to watch the movie again to see if I can pick up on more.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Friday the 13th: Part III

Premise: Jason kills some more people, but with his hockey mask this time.

 

Had I known how directly this is a sequel to Part 2, I would’ve waited to see that first. I’ve only seen the original Friday the 13^th and the 2000s remake. I assumed the franchise had pretty standalone installments, like A Nightmare on Elm Street. Instead, Part 3 picks up right where Part 2 left off, from the look of it. That said, it’s not like the movies are that complex. I figured out what was going on right away. I just think I deprived myself of optimal enjoyment. Oh well.

 

The only thing that makes this movie noteworthy is that it’s where Jason gets his hockey mask. That’s actually pretty huge. The hockey mask is one of the most identifiable accessories in film history; in a way that makes this movie an essential part of film history, which is odd to think about. Is there anything else this iconic that came so late in a franchise? Normally a franchise has its icon right away and builds from it. Michael Myers’ mask. Freddy Kruger’s whole look. The Ghostface killer mask. These are the things the audience remembers and the producers use that to bring people back. Friday the 13^th didn’t have that for the first two movies. They were more anonymous and less successful than contemporary franchises. If they hadn’t stumbled onto the mask, would this franchise have been forgotten?

 

The mask is the only reason to talk about this movie. Otherwise, it’s very forgettable. Why couch the language? It’s bad. There isn’t creativity to the kills. It’s not very clever. Most of the characters are broad. There’s a reason why these movies, and this one in particular, were roasted by critics. It’s hard to find qualitative value in the movies. This movie is dumb fun though and easy to leave on when you aren’t looking for something challenging.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Old Ways

Premise: A reporter is imprisoned by locals in Mexico who believe she is possessed by a demon.

 

I wish more horror movies would start like this. This movie wastes no time getting into it. It starts with Christina (Brigitte Kali Canales) imprisoned. We don’t know too much about how she got there. It’s explained a little in flashbacks later, but it’s never fully explained. It doesn’t need to be. Horror doesn’t need a ton of context. The Old Ways gets a lot of mileage out of the unstable footing it begins the audience on. I felt like I was playing catchup for most of the movie (in a good way).

 

I’m also a fan of how it didn’t force Christina to doubt her captors the whole time. Eventually, she figures out that they really are trying to help her and gets on board with it. She switches when the audience does. There isn’t an annoying period of time when they audience realizes something is obviously wrong but the protagonist stubbornly refuses to admit it.

 

There’s just one thing I’m on the fence about with this movie. I don’t know how I feel about how much the movie tried to be cool. Or, more specifically, how much it tried to make Christina cool. She gets a few “80s action movie badass” lines. There’s a self-awareness to those moments that could bother me. Ultimately, I think they are in line with the tone of the movie. This movie isn’t overly stern. It’s a little playful throughout. It did take some getting used to.

 

I wish most horror movies I saw were this good. The filmmakers don’t get overly ambitious. They stick to what works. It mostly happens in one room. The setup is light. The actors are just good enough to sell the material. The scares are more psychological than edited together. What’s crazy is that this director is primarily known for music videos and working on Muppets projects. Hopefully, he dips back into horror.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Woman

Premise: A rural family capture a wild woman and keep her in their basement.

 

This is a baffling movie. Some of that is on me. Most is on the film. What I didn’t realize going in is that this is actually part 2 of a series of so far 3 films. The first was Offspring in 2009. The third is Darlin’ in 2019. Pollyanna McIntosh’s nameless woman is the linking element of the franchise. She belongs to a tribe of cannibals who live in the wild in the Northeast US. I didn’t realize any of this going in. That would’ve helped a little, because The Woman does little to explain this.

 

From my perspective when I watched this, the movie is about a man (Sean Bridgers) seeing a wild woman bathing while he goes hunting one day. He knocks her out and chains her in the family cellar. Then he shows this to his wife, daughter, and son. The family, specifically the wife and teenage daughter, seem unsettled by this but go along with it because...I have no clue. It’s pretty clear that the father and the son have a boner for the woman. The son is even more disturbed than the father. The mother is pretty afraid of the father. Clearly that’s an abusive relationship. And the daughter is used to shutting down as a defense mechanism. No characters use their words and the actors aren’t good enough to express what they need to silently. I spent most of the movie not understanding why they would go along with this and why the father felt so comfortable showing this to them. It turns out, the family has already been raising a young cannibal boy as a dog. You’d think that would explain the performances, but it actually doesn’t. The family don’t respond to the father with a “Dad’s up to his old shit again” attitude. They seem shocked and surprised. The middle of the movie is missing all sorts of conversations about why he’s doing that or acknowledgement that they even know about this cannibal tribe that they clearly know about.

 

The quality and performances are so bad that I kept thinking that maybe this is some kind of John Waters-style satire. That’s giving it too much credit. This movie is just bad. Very bad. If anything I’ve said makes it sound interesting, then I have failed. This isn’t “fun bad”. It’s just bafflingly bad. The wrong decision was made everywhere. It’s paced horribly. It made the objectively short 101-minute runtime still feel interminable. This was an awful viewing experience. Apologies to anyone who worked on this and put effort into it. I truly hated this.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Ringu

Premise: There’s a tape that kills you seven days after you watch it.

 

This is the Japanese original that the 2002 American The Ring was based on. You know that insufferable guy who, after you say you liked The Ring says “It’s not as good as the Japanese original”? This is the movie he’s talking about.

 

My stance on American remakes has long been that there’s nothing wrong with remaking a movie for American audiences. The problem is when they remake the movies badly. If they take a great idea and hand it to bad filmmakers with mediocre stars, the result is going to be bad. The Ring is the best-case scenario. It had a future Oscar nominee as the star and a filmmaker who quickly turned into one of our better populist filmmakers. The result was a movie that took the idea and much of the plot of the original but made it distinct and different.

 

I prefer The Ring to Ringu, and I admit that a lot of that is probably because I saw The Ring first. The movies aren’t that different. Many scenes are exactly the same. The structure is incredibly similar. The best scares are almost identical as well. So, I did really like this movie.

 

I do think there are a few differences that make Ringu a little inferior in my eyes. For one, it is a cheaper movie with less atmosphere. Part of what makes The Ring so great is how dreary and overcast it is. A good amount of money went into the look of the movie. Ringu has a smaller budget and films things more as they are. There’s some power in that too: generating scares from how commonplace everything is despite the impending doom. The Ring does a better job picking where to explain and not explain the story. Ringu has a backstory about the little girl having telepathic abilities and her father making a show of that. It was too much. I prefer how The Ring just makes Samara evil and doesn’t explain it much beyond that.

 

One place Ringu absolutely is superior is the very end. That’s fucking brutal. In The Ring, the rule was just that you have to make a copy. In Ringu, you must make a copy and show it to someone. The end of the movie implies that the protagonist is going to show it to her father to save her son. I loved that.

 

Sorry that I didn’t talk about Ringu on its own. That’s impossible for me to do. The comparison is what interests me about it. If I was just talking about it on its own, I’d just say it was very familiar (since I’ve seen The Ring). For fans of The Ring though, it’s really fun to watch Ringu for the comparison.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Tremors

Premise: A small western community is rocked when creatures from below start attacking them.

 

I wish there was a way to untangle the creature-feature from horror. Tremors is called a horror movie, because the creatures from below premise sounds scary, but this is a pretty straightforward action movie. Even the comedy isn't playing on horror tension. There aren't scares in this. This is no more horror than Evolution is.

 

Rated not as horror, this is an OK movie. I like Kevin Bacon as weird more than as a traditional leading man. Pairing him with Fred Ward is surprisingly effective. I'd expect a studio to demand a comic to play that sidekick role, but I prefer Ward's energy. Reba McEntire and Michael Gross are a lot of fun as the gun-toting neighbors. It's hard for me to comment on Finn Carter's performance, because I spent most of the time trying to do the math to make it possible for her to be Laurie Holden. I can’t be the only one who sees a resemblance.

 

This is one of those movies that's just on the cusp of being good. Throw anything more at it and it'll topple. That's why the sequels were all straight to video. It's why the director never moved beyond journeyman status. It's a nice way to burn a couple hours but never mistake it for horror. Not even a horror comedy.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Deep Red

Premise: A reporter investigates a murder that he's the sole witness of while the murderer attempts to kill all his leads.

 

I like this movie, but I think every Argento is going to suffer from Suspiria comparison. I went into Suspiria completely unaware of Argento's style. I saw it in a packed house at a midnight screening. The movie blew me away. The color. The sound. The style. It hit me hard and I immediately fell in love with it. Deep Red isn't quite as stylistic. I saw it at home on a 32" TV. It's never going to compare.

 

This is good though. It's informative. It has the violence and mystery of Argento's later films still. He hasn't embraced the supernatural and bold style yet. I feel like the weird dubbing in the post-production should bother me, but it actually makes me like the movie more. There's something uncanny about it, with the timing being just the slightest bit off. It's like that scene in Black Swan when Natalie Portman and her reflection are just a little bit off. I assume there will be Dario Argento movies I'll dislike at some point. He's made many movies and they don't all have a high reputation. I'm certainly enjoying just watching the hits so far though.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Found Footage 3-D

Premise: Filmmakers make the first 3-D found footage horror movie only to discover that they are in one.

 

Here's the thing. I like this movie, but it invites a lot of takes that really annoys me. I think it's true that to properly parody something, you have to love it first. That's why I love Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles and am much lower on Spaceballs and Robin Hood Men in Tights. I think you can tell that Mel Brooks loves classic horror and westerns and that he has less love and commitment to Star Wars and Robin Hood tales. I'd be curious to know where the filmmakers of this movie land. I suspect it comes from a place of love.

 

The idea is very meta and fairly cynical. There's a lot of commentary on how much found footage doesn't make sense and the bad faith ideas filmmakers have about the style. As expected, a quick look at the reviews use this movie as a confirmation for why the reviewers don't like found footage movies. They can't help but make a dig about how bad the movies are before praising this one. I think they are missing the point though. This movie isn't about a bad found footage movie. It's a movie about a bad film production that happens to be a found footage horror movie. The movie spends a lot of time picking apart the found footage style. It breaks down the rules and how people mess the movies up. Yet, it ends up dodging those exact pitfalls. It's a really competent horror movie. The humor is from the meta-ness and irony, not from lame jokes. It knows when to deflate things and how. Like, the scene when the lead actress screams and all the plates come flying out. It's a great moment, yet it has the brilliant explanation that it's a planned effect that malfunctioned.

 

A few things do prevent me from fully loving the movie. I couldn't get invested in the interpersonal dynamics between the cast and crew. The stuff about the producer taking over the film from the director wasn't as clever as the found footage commentary. The semi-professional nature of this footage maybe needs slightly better actors than found footage normally requires. As is, the movie is more interesting to talk about than to watch. Some movies I want to see. Others I want to have seen*.

 

*Example. The Birth of a Nation is a repugnant and overlong movie. I hated watching it. As a piece of film history though, I'm glad that I've seen the movie and have that as a reference point for film discussions now. That's the difference between wanting to see and to have seen.

 

Weirdly, I opted to watch this in 3-D but without the glasses. It somehow felt right for the spirit of the movie as the story of a failed production that misunderstands everything about the genre. I respect how silly the choice is. Like, there really is never a need for found footage in 3-D, however it's not like I actually believe the footage is real. Why not be in 3-D?

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Tales of Halloween

Premise: An anthology of playful Halloween-inspired stories.

 

For horror anthology Reactions I like to break up the different segments into little mini responses. I'm won't be doing that for Tales of Halloween for a couple reasons. First, there are too many of them: 10, I believe. Second, I didn't like enough of them to be worth the effort. I get excited about any horror anthology that I hear about, because it means a list of horror filmmakers I could discover. It worked well for the V/H/S movies, which introduced me to many of my favorite names in horror now. Tales of Halloween wasn't as rich with discovery.

 

I'm not a huge fan of playful horror. For horror comedy to work for me, the jokes have to be really good. Otherwise, the playfulness tends to deflate the stakes too much. I often say that I'm all about mood horror: a creeping sensation that I can't shake for a while after the movie. When a horror anthology mixes the playful with the serious, the spell is broken. That's why the V/H/S series is so irresistible to me. They are all serious (in the first two, at least). Tales of Halloween mixes more and the results are more lackluster. The immediate comparison is Trick r' Treat. It's also a horror anthology with some humor and the same "Halloween night in the burbs" premise. I think why I prefer Trick r Treat a lot more is that it has a single writer/director. The film is tighter and more consistent. Even if the comedy breaks the spell, it does feel all of one vision. Tales of Halloween is clearly made by different filmmakers all hitting different tones. The more I think about it, producers really make horror anthologies work or not, and I question the producers of Tales of Halloween's control over the project.

 

That's not to say the film was without merit. I think many of the shorts are very clever. I like the spiritually similar twists of The Night Billy Raised Hell and The Ransom of Rusty Rex. Bad Seed ends the movie on a great note with them starring down the potentially dangerous pumpkin patch. Trick has a really fun flip of the story too. These do feel a lot like the filmmakers each made their segments how they wanted then turned them into the producers to combine them as they wanted. There are only a couple notes of interconnectedness. This is a waiting room movie though. Like, if there was a horror equivalent to the linear HBO channel, when a movie would end at 4:45 and the next one wasn't scheduled until 5, they'd sometimes put on filler content. These shorts would work best there. I preferred them all alone much more than as a film.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Quick Reaction: Don't Knock Twice

The most I can say about this movie is that it struggled to hold my interest. In theory, I like the story of the Baba Yaga and the passing of the curse. I never got to where I was invested though. I love Katee Sackhoff in a good horror movie and I'm determined to form an opinion on Lucy Boynton. I've seen her in several projects but I'm still not sure what she brings to the table. This movie feels very thrown together, down to Sakhoff being American and Boyton being British. The characters needed to be more fleshed out and the nature of the Baba Yaga threat could've been clearer. Anything to give this more personality.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Wretched

Premise: A teen becomes suspicious that a creature has taken over his neighbor.

 

I'm a little annoyed, based on a Wikipedia prompt that said The Wretched was the first movie since Avatar to lead the US Box Office for 6 consecutive weeks. Off that prompt, I decided to look up the last times that has happened before that. The list is just Titanic then some 80s movies when it was way easier to lead for that long (Good Morning, Vietnam, Crocodile Dundee, Back to the Future). But then I decided to check Box Office Mojo again. According to that site, The Wretched "only" led for 5 weeks. Still remarkable but a much more common achievement. Anyway, The Wretched's success is a nice reminder of how much COVID decimated things.

 

Regardless, this is a good horror movie. Coincidentally, I watched Fright Night a day before this and recognized a lot of similarities. Teen boy protagonist. A monster moves in next door and no one believes him. The Wretched amps things up though. It's a brutal movie. The body count is high with fewer protected characters than I thought. That thing ate a baby! It has some real fun with the body horror stuff. A lot of the horror is just how the bodies move.

 

I like the twist, although I'm not sure the movie was really playing fair. It's a fun idea, playing with how the monster or witch or whatever it is can wipe the characters' brains, but it implies that his memory was wiped at the beginning or that, like, our minds were wiped too. It really makes me question what a movie even is. Are movies tales that are being retold? Are they experiences that we are going through with the characters? Are they populist art installations? This movie really has accidentally given me an identity crisis. Intentional or not, that's good hoor.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Fright Night

Premise: A boy discovers his new neighbor is a vampire.

 

This is a movie that effectively pulls off a tricky balance. It's a fairly serious horror movie but also a comedic take on B-horror movies. Getting that wrong can undermine both. Getting it right can be a lot of fun. Fright Night starts right by literally beginning with the Peter Vincent late night B-movie show It immediately tells us what the movie is pulling from. That way, someone like the cooky mom isn't out of place. Or the friend who turns into a vampire. That character can only exist in a movie with a sense of humor.

 

I like that we find out early that the neighbor really is a vampire. It's annoying when movies try to conceal that. Dude, I saw the trailer, read the description on the site, and/or saw the poster art. Why are you acting like the audience will be surprised by this? So, it's nice that Fright Night makes it more about him convincing everyone else. And even that doesn't go on too long. Peter Vincent figures it out too, but he's rightfully paralyzed when it comes to what he should do.

Sure, the movie is a little cheesy. The performances could use some work. It was fun trying to figure out what I knew Amanda Bearse from. That she went from this to Married...with Children in two years is insane. Then again, how are we not more surprised that Katey Sagal was only 33 when that show started? I enjoyed the movie though for what it is.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: She Done Him Wrong

This is one of those movies where everything around the movie I find more interesting than the movie itself. It's the shortest Best Picture nominee ever, for example, at just a hair over an hour. It's Mae West's big Hollywood debut and adapted from a play she wrote. This is sort of a fine-tuning movie for the Hays Code era. They had to cut and edit this thing repeatedly before it was approved by the censors. Even still, it managed to sneak in some of West's signature sauciness. It's frustrating how, without proper context, it's possible to think they didn't invent swearing in America until the 1960s. As bad as the MPAA are, the Hays Code makes it seem downright liberal. I think the movie itself it fine. West is good and I like seeing a young Cary Grant. I can feel the censors' hands on all of it though. It's hard to watch this without constantly thinking, "I wonder what that line was supposed to be?"

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Our House

Premise: A young engineer's science experiment accidentally conjures a malevolent force.

 

I like to use horror anthologies as a starting point to find other horror movies. It lets me get a taste for several directors and writers in a short amount of time. If they can make a good 5-20 short film, maybe they can make a good feature film too. That's how I came to Our House. The director made a great short for the anthology Holidays. It was based on Father's Day and is all about a woman lured to a mysterious place while listening to a cryptic tape recorded by her late father. It's a terrific bit of atmosphere and the standout short from that movie.

 

Our House is the director's feature debut, and it pulls from similar ideas. It also has dead parents and a mysterious force luring the children that is probably evil. Anthony Scott Burns (the director) seems to specialize at how longing can trick people into making poor decisions. Our House is less atmospheric than his Holidays short. It's more traditional in the scares and conclusion. I liked it though. Enough of the good stuff was still there. It's weird how rarely sadness is used as an entry point for scares in movies.

 

Thomas Mann is good in the lead role. His hard to pin down age makes it easy to pull off several roles. He does seem old enough to be taking care of his younger siblings after their parents die yet he also fits as a young college student. I'm not as crazy about Nicola Peltz. I can see why they cast her in this coming off Bate Motel. I'm looking for the non-lazy way to say she's too pretty for the role, because that's not exactly what I mean. She just looks too much like she came off the set of The Hills to be in the scenes for this movie. I wish I had better words for it. She was distracting though in a way that a Natalia Dyer, Zoey Deutch, or Haley Lu Richardson wouldn't've been.

 

Our House isn't a total hit; however, it hits enough of the right beats that I remain curious about what else this filmmaker is up to.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Quiet Ones

Premise: A group led by a scientist research possible paranormal occurrences caused by a young woman.

 

On a basic level, this is the movie I assumed it would be. Sam Claflin is present but not memorable. Like usual, I spent most of the movie saying "I don't think that's Sam Claflin, but it's someone that certainly looks a lot like him". Jarred Harris is an educated British man who is probably a villain in some way. Olivia Cooke is a disinterested youth. It's got some Conjuring vibes with the 1970s setting. It's not a great movie, but it's the movie I signed up for. Hard to be too negative about that.

 

This is the kind of movie where I didn't exactly predict the twists, but they all were obvious nonetheless*. For example, Jane actually being Evey. I mean, her name is Jane Harper. It might as well be Jane Doe. She has a mysterious past. Whatever the explanation for the occurrences would be, I was pretty sure she'd be at the center of them. And she was. The same goes for the revelation about Harris' son. So, the thrills in this movie were pretty low.

 

*Remember, I'm the guy who gives in depth examinations of Oscar picks, how they could win, and why they could fail, yet I rarely pick the right Best Picture winner. I know all the scenarios. I'm bad at making the single right pick. Either way, it's hard to surprise me.

 

I do like the idea of an evil force getting summoned and doing some body hopping. It's unfortunate that I watched At the Devil's Door just a couple days before, which is largely about the same thing and found a cleverer way to tell the story. This is still just good enough, mostly thanks to a strong cast. And the 70s setting gives it some much needed flavor. I liked how they found ways to mix the 8mm footage into this. That gave it sound found-footage vibes.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend