Didn’t I see this shit in theaters? Why yes, yes I DID see this shit in theaters! I didn’t really remember anything about this version of the movie, other than Ryan Reynolds was in it and he had a beard and chopped a whole bunch of wood. Apparently I had rated it on Netflix, but while scrambling for haunted house movies to review in time for Halloween, I guess this somehow snuck into the mix. Seriously though, all I remembered was him chopping wood for the whole goddamned movie. Even when I watched it for my second time, I kept thinking, “When is going to chop some wood?”, as well as “Why did he stop chopping wood?”, because ladies love a guy chopping wood with a beard. Well, a beard can’t chop wood, but a guy with a beard can.
I’ll just leave this shirtless, bearded Ryan Reynolds right here to chop some wood. And who says I only post pictures of girls with big boobs?!
George and Kathy Lutz (Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George) are looking for a new home that will be big enough for their family. They stumble across a house that seems to be far too cheap for the size of it, and wonder why they’re getting such a good deal. They learn that a brutal murder had taken place there, and George says something about how houses aren’t evil, people are evil. Once the couple and three kids move into the house, things start getting wacky with some creepy dreams that George has. His financial frustrations, along with all of the maintenance the house needs, start getting to him as he starts lashing out verbally towards the kids and his wife. Curious about the stories involving the house, Kathy researches all of the strange events that have taken place there and learns that there was a cult preacher guy who used to torture and kill Native Americans, and this seems to be the cause of all the problems. As the evil spirits of the house drive George to madness and make him chase his family around with a shotgun, Kathy is able to knock him out and take him away, causing the evil craziness to stop happening. They never returned for their home, not even for their personal belongings, but the house kept finding residents to drive crazy.
The ghost even scared her eyebrows a different color!
I know I’m not too huge a fan of the original movie, but it’s still head and shoulders above this version. The concept of bad things happening somewhere and those events causing someone to go bonkers isn’t all that new, but can still be done well. The reason why the original worked, for me at least, was that it was a slow and subtle transition from James Brolin being a nice family guy to being out of his mind. Ryan Reynolds was believable as a nice family guy, and we has relatively believable as a psychopath, but the transition between the two wasn’t all that smooth. One second he’s boning his wife, the next he’s seeing ghosts and beardedly (is that a word?) yelling at one of the kids for going into the basement. Oh yeah, that’s another thing, which is that this version had the ghosts of people who were murdered appearing to the new residents. The original had weird apparitions and figures, but it was vague who they were and why they were appearing. But I guess that’s one of the problems I had with the original, in that it was vague as far as why the house was evil, whereas I kind of enjoyed the fact that there was an actual reason why this house was so evil. I’m sure there are some who will argue that adding in that backstory wasn’t necessary, and there were lots of things unnecessary about the movie, but I can at least appreciate the fact that they attempted some sort of explanation for why such terrible things were happening. This one only really needs to be seen if you have a big Ryan Reynolds/beard fetish.
Everyone remembers the cartoon of this story, right? Well, not only do I remember that, but I also remember that we bought live-action version of the story starring Jeff Goldblum from the grocery store some time in the early 90′s, and it was boring and shitty. The first time I watched this installment, I had invited my mom to watch it with me because it was probably a Friday or Saturday night and I was a loser with no friends. Much to our surprise, this movie was bloody as shit!I don’t necessarily mean that in either a good or a bad way, I guess it was just surprising. Where am I going with this? I really have no idea, I’m just trying to fill the “introductory paragraph” that you have all come to know and love. Oh wait! I saved the best for last! Did you know I’ve actually fucking visited Sleepy Hollow? Ya see, back in college, when most other people were doing drugs or having sex or whatever, I was convincing friends to go on roadtrips in the middle of the night to places like Sleepy Hollow. Did anything spooky happen there? Nope! But it’s pretty funny that the name of every building and company there had “Sleepy Hollow” in the name. Thanks like “Animal Hospital of Sleepy Hollow”, or “Sleepy Hollow Diner”, even “This Building is Awake and Solid…of Sleepy Hollow”. Okay fine, I made some of those up.
Despite Johnny Depp fitting the part, this relationship seemed a little forced. One exchange of dialogue included Ichabod being all “OH HEY GIRL, ARE YOU LIKE, A FUCKING WITCH OR SOMETHING?”, and she’s all like “WHOA HEY WHY ARE YOU BEING A DICK TO ME RIGHT NOW”, and then Ichabod is all like “NAW BITCH, IT’S BECAUSE YOU’VE FUCKING BEWITCHED ME……OH SHIIITTTTTTTTT!!!!” and then they fuck or something.
It’s the turn of the century, which I think was the 18th going on 19th, and Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent from the police brigade (or whatever they called it) in New York City to the town of Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod is seemingly chastised and punished for investigating all deaths and pushing for the science behind all murders. It appears he’s met his match when the people in Sleepy Hollow are blaming the recent deaths on an old legend of a Headless Horseman, who is the spirit of a brutal war criminal. As more and more people are being murdered, and Ichabod Crane, in his bumbling yet scientific ways, is trying to find out what all of the victims have in common. After some detective work, it turns out that all the murders can be tied to some sort of dispute over land or money or something, and there’s one lady who has something to gain from all of these murders, so she had taken the skull of the Horseman, allowing her to command him. Crane is able to take possession of the skull and return it to the spectre that’s been beheading everyone, who then takes the one commanding him down to Hell with him. Feeling as though his job was accomplished, Ichabod Crane moves back to New York City with Christina Ricci and some kid whose dad was killed by the Horseman.
“FUUUUCKING PAAAAARTYYYYYYYY!”
I DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF THAT SHIT FROM THE CARTOON. And to be quite honest, I think Mr. Burton took a few artistic liberties to make this movie. Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane was a good choice, and he was able to play a character who is odd and quirky, yet not stupid or insane. It’s a much more subtle version of some of the Johnny Depp characters we’ve seen in the past decade. Most of the supporting cast was pretty good too, especially Christopher Walken as the Head-having Horseman. The look and feel of the film was one of the highlights, as Burton was able to make everything look authentic, yet give the feeling of unease. Lots of scenes, if not all of them, were filmed with blue-tinted filters that gave everything a cold and detached look. Despite the film being interesting to look at, and all of the cast doing a great job, the biggest issue with this movie is the liberties made with the plot. I’m still not sure if I have any fucking clue what was going on in it, and it was made for more complicated than I felt it needed to be. I understand that there might not have been too much to go with as far as adapting the source material into the movie, but did it need to be that complicated? I totally left shit out of the plot because it would have confused me again trying to figure it out, but you’re not missing out. Another thing was that even though the look and feel of the film was odd and interesting, it wasn’t actually scary. I think the creepy part about the Headless Horseman is the mystery behind who he is and why he kills the people he kills. I feel that way about most legends, that the less you know the better, and that there was no rhyme or reason as to why you’d fall victim to this phantom. It certainly committed to a certain tone, but that tone wasn’t all that creepy or anything, and was a little too similar to any other “slasher” that was out around that time.
I know, right? SHIT’S GETTING SERIOUS. What does this mean? Well, you can still subscribe to it the same exact way you did before. Only NOW, I think you can rate it? I don’t know, you might have been able to rate it before, but Apple sent me an email and they were all excited to tell me my podcast had been approved. So what are the ways to get it now, you ask? Well, you can go to the Apple page for the podcast here:
You can also go into the iTunes store and type in SEND MORE COPS and click the podcasts because it’s the only one named SEND MORE COPS. I wonder how many times I can type SEND MORE COPS in this post? I guess a few more times, at least. I hope you guys like it, I hope to get another episode out early next week. But until then, just listen to the first episode of SEND MORE COPS a few more times. And if you can somehow rate it on iTunes, whether you like it or not, so that way they have some statistics to tell me. I LOVE STATISTICS. SEND MORE COPS.
I have absolutely no qualms about really enjoying the first film, and really can’t remember much of what happened in its sequel. I do remember not liking the sequel, and was considering not going to see this because the trailers weren’t that exciting. Correction, the first trailer, singular, was kind of lame and I didn’t enjoy the direction that the franchise was headed. I told myself I wouldn’t watch any further trailers and then would wait to hear some reviews, but then when I went to see Drive, they played a trailer for this that looked like it gave away EVERY FUCKING SCARE IN THE MOVIE. I was pretty pissed, and confirmed I wouldn’t see this movie. Luckily, it was revealed that basically all footage in the trailers was there just to throw people off, which redeemed my faith in the possibility that this could be entertaining, and luckily, I was right. Oh yeah, and there’s going to be spoilers all over the place, so if that’s not your thing, you might not want to go further.
Is this a scene from the movie? No, it’s just that scene from the trailer. I’ll try again next time.
Each previous movie focused on one of two sisters (Katie Featherstone and Sprague Grayden), and this installment starts with the realization that these sisters were filmed as children, but all of the VHS tapes of them went missing during the course of events in the second film. PA3 shows us what was contained on that footage. We see the sisters Katie and Kristi, played by Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown, growing up with their mom and her boyfriend who makes a living videotaping weddings. Kristi is constantly talking about her imaginary friend named Toby who lives in the crawl space of her and Katie’s room. For some reason, which isn’t really made clear, weird things start happening, so the boyfriend begins videotaping the weird sounds that are happening in the house. From lightbulbs shattering to seeing objects move, things are getting weirder and weirder. The occurrences become so powerful that babysitters are being physically assaulted, large items are being moved great distances or destroyed, even Katie is lifted into the air by her ponytail, and the whole time Kristi is blaming this stuff on “Tony”. The boyfriend does research on demons and witches and shit, and sees a photo of some coven of witches wearing necklaces with a strange symbol. When this symbol is seen in the crawl space of the girls’ room, the family goes to stay at the grandmother’s house. That night, the two girls and their mom disappear into the house, and the boyfriend tries to find them. We can see him being followed by strange silhouettes, and when paintings are moved to the ground, we see strange symbols on the walls. Exploring the garage, the boyfriend sees a group of women in black robes and wearing the same strange necklaces as from the photo he found. The girls’ mom is then thrown at him from the top of the stairs, his body is contorted and broken by an unseen presence, Katie’s face flashes to that of what we saw at the end of the first movie, and the grandmother takes the children by the hand, while Kristi makes sure to invite Toby to come with them.
Is this a scene from the movie? Nope, guess again!
I really wanted to dislike this movie, probably because of how disappointed I was in the previous installment. The first film didn’t need any sort of background of mythology whatsoever, that I was annoyed with how the built upon that in the second. Something about a curse and a demon taking the firstborn male in the family or something? Yeah, no thanks. However, now that we can see how this “curse” started (kind of) and learned that the victims of the previous movies were subjected to this torture because their grandmother was a witch? Actually pretty cool. Before I say too much stuff that’s good, let’s say some things I didn’t like. The first big “scares” of the movie were scares involving people, where they built tension thinking a ghost or something would do something crazy, only to have a human jump out. Sure, it was fun to do once, but repeatedly? No thanks. The acting wasn’t all that strong, but that isn’t too big of a surprise when keeping the previous movies in mind, but the more characters brought in, the more you noticed it. The boyfriend takes a camera and attached it to an oscillating fan, and even though it was a clever idea, it was too predictable that ANY time you saw that shot, you knew something creepy was going to happen. Same goes for when Katie plays “Bloody Mary” with the person watching her, so it was just making it way too obvious when to expect things to happen. Oh yeah, and there was a “sex scene” which seemed really arbitrary and pointless. Not necessarily complaining about what I saw, just seemed like an executive said, “Hey guys, sex it up a little bit!”
Look at how dramatic THIS is! This clearly must be in the film! BZZZT. WRONG.
What I really like about all of the movies in this franchise is the fact that you never, EVER see a “ghost”. You see objects, figures, and shapes, but they never resort to showing what the source of everything is, which is something most other films are all too quick to do. Nothing is as creepy as what we imagine “Toby” to look like, and I’m glad this franchise is keeping it that way. Whenever there was about to be something creepy happen, there was always a subtle, high-pitched sound that was made, implying the entity was causing that to happen. We’ve heard the ominous rumbling sounds, but I don’t think this effect was used in this waY in the previous films. And although there were plenty of moments where there was obvious CGI, the practical effects that they did were pretty cool. I won’t get into detail about EVERY little twist and turn that happens in the movie, but if you know these movies, you can just imagine some things that they do. They way they can make objects appear, disappear, and the way Toby manifests himself are all pretty cool camera tricks.
Wait a second….HOLY SHIT, THIS REALLY IS FROM THE MOVIE! THIS IS A PICTURE OF THE MOVIE! FOR REAL!
Quite a few more good things than bad things, huh? So why am isn’t this getting a better rating? Well, I know this movie stands on its own, especially considering it’s a prequel, and that it shouldn’t rely too heavily on the two previous films. That might be all well and good, but do you remember how pointless Paranormal Activity 2 is? Let’s think about it; the first film didn’t really establish any mythology at all, other than Katie has had issues with “ghosts” before, which resulted in her house burning down. Does anyone care? No. They liked seeing doors open and close and footsteps. The second film reveals that there is some sort of blood curse, but this curse is pursuing a different family member who viewers don’t really care about. It gave a little bit more information, but not that much. Now that we’re on our third film, the one that establishes curses and witches and demons, and maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for all of that stuff, I really liked where it went. The franchise changed from being afraid of this demon to instead being afraid of the witches who summoned this demon, and whether it be Rosemary’s Baby or The Last Exorcism, I will always be more creeped out by the calm individuals who are unassuming, but summon demons in their free time. I think that maybe had this film been delayed a little bit and Paranormal Activity 2 never existed, you’d have a very solid franchise on your hands, with just enough information being given and just enough mysteries for the viewers. Instead, we’ll probably get a fourth installment that won’t make any sense because we already know how the original victims got involved in these terrible things in the first place. I was really hoping this one would end in a giant fire like the one they talk about in the two previous movies, but they’re probably saving that for part 5 or something. Oh yeah, and that movie Catfish was probably fake. Dammit.
THAT’S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS. IT’S THE “SEND MORE COPS” PODCAST, HOSTED BY YOURS TRULY. It’s hard to turn off the caps lock while looking at that image, but here it goes. I know that no one really said they wanted me to do a podcast, nor did many people say they would listen to it. But this isn’t about you, is it? I wanted to do a podcast, so here it fucking is. I mostly really wanted a good name before I chose something like “The Wolfman Howleth” or something else equally as dumb. Debut episode is only 17 minutes, so download, plug in, turn it up, and bang your fucking head. Well, bang it against a wall to forget you ever downloaded it. You might also notice that there’s now a tab up on top of this page for the podcast that has up-to-date episode information and instructions on how to download it if you don’t know how to already. You can leave comments on that page if you have any questions of concerns. Thanks for checking it out!
Episode 1
On our very first installment, The Wolfman explains what the show is, where it’s name comes from, and how The Wolfman himself received his name. Also, he talks about Paranormal Activity, Return of the Living Dead, and things you can come to expect from this podcast.
I know that I mentioned this movie a few months ago when talking about movies that remind me of summer, so why the fuck am I watching it now? Well, as you may remember, I reviewed House of 1000 Corpses recently, which is tolerable, but this movie is so much fucking better than that one, I felt the need to wash the taste of it out of my mouth. And considering I have reviewed the other three movies that Rob Zombie has done, generally saying they aren’t good, I figured he deserved some recognition with what he accomplished on this film. I guess I am just missing the reason why all of the nu-metal kids eat up everything he does like it’s gold, especially considering White Zombie hasn’t been popular for at least a decade. Maybe his stuff is just always on sale at Hot Topic or something? Or maybe Rob Zombie is the new Tim Burton? I am so out of touch with youth culture!
Captain Spaulding is just as scary without the make up as he is when it’s on.
When the home of the psycho freaks from the first film is raided by the police, Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sherri Moon Zombie) are the only ones to escape, while their mother, now played by Leslie Easterbrook, is taken into police custody. Otis and Babycontact their father, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), to meet them, and while waiting, the two of them terrorize, torment, and ultimately kill a family in a hotel room. With Mama Firefly in custody, we learn that the officer in charge of interrogating her, played by William Forsythe, has a personaly vendetta against the family for killing his brother. He kills Mama Firefly furing the interrogation, and sets two bounty hunters loose of Otis, Baby, and Captain Spaulding. Once our murderers leave their motel, they seek refuge with an old friend, played by Ken Foree, who offers them salvation at his whore house. Unfortunately, this whore house is still within the reach of the bounty hunters, who apprehend these “Devil’s Rejects” and turns them into Forsythe. He then proceeds to torture them on behalf of all of their victims, leaving them for dead after setting their house on fire. Their behemoth of a brother who was able to avoid the initial police raid kills Forsythe, as well as frees Otis, Baby and Spaulding. As they hit the highway, things seem like they are going to work out, until they run into a police blockade. Realizing their fate, they charge into the blockade, guns blazing, as they are finally killed.
Ken Foree has an awesome line about horny robots bumping into each other and knocking shit over…it was pretty awesome.
I know I might have talked a little bit of shit on Zombie’s first movie, but I am so glad that his previous movie exists, because it’s what made Devil’ Rejects possible. It’s almost like Zombie went back, cut out everything about the first movie that didn’t work, took everything that was awesome about it, and doubled it. They took the most entertaining characters from the first movie and made the entire film about them. The characters that were added, like Ken Foree and William Forsythe, only heightened the whole movie and were a lot of fun to watch. They were able to flip back and forth between terrifying psychopaths and then say something clever and they became endearing again. Bill Moseley had all of the terror from the first film, but juxtaposed with his “comedic” moments were what made the terrifying times all that scarier. Sid Haig was just as vulgar and disgusting as he was in the first movie, but this time we got more of him. Sherri Moon Zombie really made the character of “Baby” all her own, in that there is something almost innocent and endearing about her, as if she is a five year old in a grown woman’s body, but then switch right back into an annoying, irritating psychopath. The cast is really what makes this film stand out.
NO, BRIAN POSEHN! NOOOO!!!!!!
Rob Zombie’s music video style of filmmaking really peaked with this film as his combinations of music and visuals were done quite well. There are moments in the previous film and in his Halloween films where you can tell he just always wanted to use a specific song in a movie, but it never really felt forced in this movie. His use of the soundtrack really makes this movie feel like an authentic 1970′s splatter film with a lot more of a polished style and feel to it. And having the film end with hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” almost to completion was a great way to end these characters for good. One thing about the movie that I don’t necessarily like is the fact that it feels like two short films, as opposed to one long one. When I watch all the stuff going on in the motel, which feels like almost the entire movie, I forgot what happened at the end. Or when we get to the second half and they are with Ken Foree, you completely forget how long we spent watching them physical and mentally torture people. This is what he did in his Halloween remake also, and it just feels weird and long (that’s what she said). If there was a smoother transition between the two parts of the film or maybe each segment was shortened a little bit, Mr. Zombie would have gotten my highest rating. Considering the ratings of the rest of his movies, this is still quite good, but the acclaim really belongs to the cast.
Back when I was a projectionist, the trailer for this movie annoyed the FUCK out of me. It started with that little girl singing, and I always had to listen to the very beginning of trailers to make sure everything sounded right. Because of that annoyance, I had a negative opinion of this movie. That all changed the moment I saw this photo:
In case you don’t know what this is a picture of, these are my friends Lazer and Steve-O Beevo. The story behind this picture is that, considering I was working at a movie theater and would get movie shirts to wear. The box was kept in the projection booth, so I had easy access to all of this cool swag. Lazer had mentioned how much Beevo enjoyed this movie, and I’m sure you can figure out where this story is going. I sent the shirts, with the only stipulation being I had to get a picture of these two wearing these XL sized shirts. Based on Beevo’s great taste, I had no other choice but to watch this movie. This movie taught me an important lesson: ALWAYS TRUST STEVE-O BEEVO.
A bunch of fucking perverts if you ask me.
There’s always that one creepy house that all the kids in the neighborhood is afraid of, and in this cartoon, that’s no different. DJ, voiced by Mitchel Musso, has noticed the crazy old man who lives in the creepy house across the street. Through some surveillance, DJ discovers that it’s not only toys that disappear from this creepy house, but also kids. With his best friend Chowder, voiced by Sam Werner, the two set off to figure out what’s going on. While exploring, they startle the old man who lives there, voiced by Steve Buscemi, and when he confronts the kids, he has a heart attack and seemingly dies. This might seem scary, but this affords the kids an opportunity to go inside. Through the help of some of the teenagers in the area and hearing their stories, as well as their new-found love interest Jenny, voiced by Spencer Locke, they are finally able to infiltrate the house successfully. They find that it’s almost as if the house is alive, which means there’s a way to kill it. The further they explore, they eventually find a large woman who is seemingly cased in concrete. At this time, the old man who lived there shows up, because he’s not dead, and tells the story of the house. Turns out that he used to live there with his very obese wife, and while building the house, she accidentally became encased in concrete. Her spirit is what caused the house to attack passersby because of her wrongful death, and it’s been the old man yelling at everyone in hopes of protecting them. He can’t leave the house, because it’s the embodiment of his wife, and he loves the house. Eventually, the house realizes the kids are trying to destroy it, which leads to the house uprooting itself and chases them to a construction yard. Luckily, DJ is able to blow the house up with dynamite, which frees all of the neighborhood kids of their fear, and the old man of his responsibilities as he gives back all the toys that the house confiscated. DJ and Chowder then have enough time to go trick or treating, because after all, it’s Halloween!
HAHAHA THE BABYSITTER’S BOYFRIEND DRESSES LIKE ME!
If you hadn’t seen this movie before, would you automatically think, based on the description, that it was a cartoon? And the weird thing is, the filmmakers had to make changes to ALLOW it to be PG. If they had kept the film the way they intended, it wouldn’t have even gotten a PG rating. The film had to include a sequence of the characters who had been “eaten” by the house emerging from the house alive and well to make the cut. There are plenty of segments that are intense and way too scary for kids, and considering that this movie doesn’t really dumb things down for kids is what makes it so much fun. Sure, there is physical comedy in it that’s silly and there’s a scene where Jenny points at an object and says it’s the house’s uvula, causing Chowder to respond with “Ohhhh…so it’s a GIRL house”, which is still pretty mature weiner/vagina humor for the intended audience. I think one of the cooler things about this movie was something I didn’t learn until watching the special features. This movie was filmed with actors wearing motion capture suits, and those motions were then animated with the character designs later on. Not really that new of technology, and plenty of movies before this had used it. The cool thing about this one was that after every scene was animated, the filmmakers had a device that acted as a handheld camera, which would then allow them to move the camera around in different ways for each different scene. Did that make sense? They would create a 3D environment using the motion-capture technology, cover everything in the character and object’s “skin”, and they could treat each scene as an actual environment that someone could move around in with a handheld camera, as opposed to things always being on tripods. I might not be making sense in my description, and I don’t care, because the results show fluid animation with an added touch of “realism” that gave you an animated movie that didn’t feel animated. I definitely recommend anybody to check this out, as it’s definitely one of my favorite Halloween movies that is supposedly for kids.
The summer this movie came out was a big one for me. I saw Shannon Elizabeth’s boobs in American Pie, I saw this movie…I guess those were the highlights. I went to see this with some friends of mine, escorted by my mom since it was rated R, and later that night we slept outside. My friends and I, not my mom. She was probably inside. We slept on a trampoline and boy oh boy, let me tell YOU how fucking uncomfortable it is to sleep on a trampoline. At least I get to look back on the experience and say how I was so brave that I slept outside that night. Remember how many people thought this movie was real? And the internet was becoming a “thing” so there were websites promoting this as real? I guess that’s a pretty cool way to market a movie, except for the fact that every goddamned movie that comes out now makes the same claims. Remember how easy it was for Ruggero Deodato to convince people that the stars of his movie, Cannibal Holocaust, were dead and then they had to show up in course to prove they were alive? Man, that was crazy! You can’t do that shit now with this whole “internet” thing!
Luckily, from now until the end of time, we will get to see this shot parodied in anything that parodies anything ever, and it will never be funny ever.
The film starts with the premise that the following film we would see was recovered a year after three individuals went missing in the woods of Maryland. The reason they were in the woods was that Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, and Mike Williams are exploring the legend of the “Blair Witch”. We see the local residents of the town telling stories involving some Blair Witch lady, as well as the stories of a man who was supposedly under this witch’s influence who murdered seven children. Supposedly he would take two into his basement, make one face the corner, then kill the other. After their interviews with the residents are done, they head off into the woods with cameras, maps, and a vague idea of where to go. The trio get a little lost, and claim to have heard things on their first night camping out. While exploring deeper into the woods, they start seeing strange figures made out of sticks, as well as strange piles of rocks. They camp out again, and the strange noises seem more persistent. The paranoia and confusion of being lost, without knowing where to go, starts making them irritable and delirious. The noises persist at night, more violent and loud, and one morning, Heather and Mike wake up to find Josh missing. They continue to explore, both looking for him and looking for a way out. That night, they think they hear Josh screaming, and wake up to see a bundle of sticks, wrapped in a piece of his shirt, with some bloody teeth and other bodily items in it. Continuing to find their way out, that night they think they hear Josh screaming and pursue the sounds, only to find a house. This is the house that the seven children were murdered in, and when Mike disappear into the basement, Heather finds him, only to see him standing and facing the corner. The camera is hit violently, falls to the ground, and the movie ends.
They couldn’t even afford a pot to piss in with this budget! So he pees in the corner like an idiot.
Although “found footage” movies are relatively interchangeable these days, this film really did set the standard of this time of movie-making. It creeped me out the first time I saw it, and that last image of Mike standing in the corner stuck with me for a long time. This film certainly isn’t perfect, but when it comes to reality-based horror films that don’t have big name actors, this really gets the job done. The way this movie was filmed was also pretty innovative in the way it was filmed, considering none of the actors even really knew what was going on. For example, there is a scene where Heather is looking for the map, and between her and Josh bickering and getting more agitated, Mike lets them know that he was so frustrated that he kicked the map into the river, and Heather and Josh react genuinely. The same goes for all of the things that are experienced in the middle of the night, that the actors were instructed to record what was going on and react naturally. The directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, were the ones running through the ones, making cackling noises, clacking sticks together, and smashing their tent. I’d say that the actors did a sufficient job of managing to improvise their reactions while also remaining genuine to each given objective. When they go from anger, to rage, back down to delirium, they are all feelings that people can relate to when they’ve been in a similar situation of extreme frustration. Well, I guess I didn’t really notice until now how much Heather Donahue was overacting, but maybe she was intending to be annoying in how she reacted to everything, and if that was acting, she did a great job.
They interviewed this woman at one point, and I can’t really remember why they made fun of her so much. Maybe she is a witch? Or something? I don’t know, go watch it yourselves.
As terrified as I was to watch this movie in theaters, I have to say that this is one of very few movies that are more enjoyable at home than they are in theaters. When you’re in the theater, and everything is really quiet and dark, you can hear and see and react to everything very clearly. You know that you just heard what the characters heard and saw what the characters saw. When you watch this movie at home, there are a lot more distractions and things that can steal your focus. Even if you are watching it in the dark, you might not have a theater quality sound system, or you might not have the volume turned all the way up. This means that when the characters are telling each other to be quiet or to listen, you too tell the people you are with to be quiet to see if you can hear what’s happening. Or maybe you’re watching it alone, and it just forces you to turn the volume up a little bit. I’m sure there are lots of people who talk shit on this movie because they’re jealous about how much money it made, or have justifiable reasons to dislike it, but these filmmakers took a simple idea and pulled it off quite well. They were able to come up with an original character, that of the “Blair Witch”, create mythology around it that seemed genuine, and just ran with it. Even if the film itself isn’t a milestone in the genre of horror, the film-making process opened up the doors for tons of potential filmmakers, and let them know that if you had the funds and the time, you could be the next Blair Witch Project.
Did I give a shit about this movie when it came out? NOPE. Did I read this book or give a shit about that? NOPE. Why did I watch this movie, that didn’t really have any financial or critical success, years after it was released? Well, once again, it all comes back to Ryan Gosling. While discussing the works of Ryan Gosling with a coworker, they had mentioned that he was the original choice to be in this movie in Mark Wahlberg’s role. Unfortunately for Gosling, he got too fat and beardy and was no longer allowed to be in the movie, and was replaced by Wahlberg who had recently finished filming “The Happening”. HAHAHA, remember that movie? That sucked. Anyways, considering I am a fan of Peter Jackson and I knew this had something to do with ghosts or something I figured I’d give it a shot. Plus, ya gotta love that Stanley Tucci! Remember when he was in “The Core”? Yeah, I do, he was awesome.
Don’t take that hat off! You’ll turn blonde and then Eric Bana will turn you into an elite killer!
In the opening moments of the movie, we know that Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan, is killed in this movie. We also quickly learn that Stanley Tucci’s character is the reason she is dead, because he is a creepy pervert weirdo who invited her into some playhouse dungeon thing. Susie doesn’t quite realize that she’s dead, because she seems to be tripping her balls off in some fantasy land with another girl her age. We see the Salmon family dealing with the fact that she has disappeared and that there aren’t any suspects. Mark Wahlberg, who plays the father, continues to push and push and push the police into finding suspects, which drives his wife, played by Rachel Weisz, to leave him. Susie seems to come to terms with and realize that she is dead and that she won’t remember to the people she loves, but builds some sort of connection to them. Throughout her family’s day, they get weird feelings and experiences that seem to lead towards the realization that the neighbor, Stanley Tucci, is the one responsible. When enough evidence is collected towards Tucci, he realizes he needs to destroy the evidence, so he ditches Susie’s body, which has been in a safe in his basement whole time. He destroys the evidence and skips town and is never brought to justice by the police. In the wake of Susie’s death and her father’s acceptance of her death, his wife and the rest of the Salmon family build a stronger relationship together, so Susie has some monologue about her death built “lovely bones” that connected her family. Oh yeah, then Stanley Tucci falls off of a cliff.
Too much hair vs. not enough hair. WHO SHALL BE DECLARED WINNER! Probably not enough hair wins, because his daughter wasn’t killed.
Considering this was based on a book, I don’t really know who to blame for what the fuck was going on in this movie. I’m sure it was intended to be two linked concepts, with the investigative end being one plot and Susie’s strange time in whatever kind of purgatory place she was in, but I couldn’t really connect with either story being told. I could get more interested in the investigative side of Wahlberg finding clues and leads that would bring the killer to justice, but considering we knew it was Stanley Tucci the whole time, it wasn’t too fulfilling. The other shit that was going on wasn’t at all interesting to me, about a teenage girl accepting death and reflecting on her life or something? I guess that Peter Jackson’s involvement made me assume that the fantasy end of things would be a lot more unique or at least visually stimulating, but nothing really happened in that “world” of note. I can see how in the book, if the investigation aspect was dragged out for longer, you would get more invested in wanting the killer to be found and how that desire would tear the family apart, and how that would make the ending feel a little bit better, but I have no clue if that’s what the book did. If you liked the book, you can probably skip this, and if you like ghost stories, then DEFINITELY skip this, and instead just write some erotic Ryan Gosling fan fiction.
Holy shit, this movie came out ten years ago? I can’t really remember why I was excited to see this movie or why it was getting a publicity, maybe it was just because Tom Cruise produced it and his then-wife was in it. Also maybe because it was some guy from Spain directing an actress from Australia who was pretending to be British? Or maybe just the fact that The Sixth Sense was so popular just two years earlier that people had more faith in haunted house movies. I saw this in New York with my brother and I think my mind was blown over the fact that the movie started after 10PM, which wasn’t really something that happened in Massachusetts. Life in the big city, huh?!
The beginning stages of when Nicole Kidman cut her face off, then attached it back to her face, and every month would tighten it more and more.
Nicole Kidman plays the mother of two children in 1940′s England in a giant mansion. Her husband is away in the war, but luckily the beginning of the film shows three individuals being hired to take care of the house. The small catch is that these kids have a rare disease that doesn’t allow them to be exposed to sunlight. It’s a giant empty house, filled with groans and creaks, but it’s hard to tell what’s normal and what’s supernatural. The children tell tales of seeing other people in the house, but their mom just thinks it’s children playing tricks. It isn’t until she experiences things firsthand, such as doors forcefully opening or closing, music from the piano, running footsteps, and even her daughter appearing as an old woman, she starts to believe them. When the frustrations get to be too much, Kidman tries to travel to a neighboring house, only to be met by a dense, impenetrable fog, and also her husband, back from the war. The strange activities seem to stop for while the husband comes back, but things still seem off. The husband disappears, and then shit starts “popping off”, as the kids would say. With the discovery of grave markers on the property and questioning why the caretakers are at the house, we learn that the caretakers are ghosts! No! As the kids and their mom take refuge in the house, the activity seems to culminate in seeing multiple apparitions who are conducting a séance. We then learn that it is in fact Nicole Kidman and her family that are ghosts, and the people all the activity that they thought to be “ghosts” were people trying to contact their spirits! The film ends with the family refusing to acknowledge they are ghosts and vowing to stick together and stay in their house….FOREVER!!!!!
KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
I really only remember there being two or three good scares in this movie, with one towards the end of the movie being pants-shittingly scary. After watching this movie again, there are definitely five or six segments that could creep you out, but there’s an emphasis on “could”. Unfortunately, with all of my haunted house movie viewings, they all seem to lose their creepiness the more you see it. Knowing when all of these surprises and scares are coming makes them seem cheesy, but I really have no one to blame for that except myself. The isolation of the family in their home adds to the creepy ambiance of the whole movie, and the twist at the end definitely surprised me the first time I saw it. Because the story isn’t really too original or unique, the twist is what makes this move stand out from most other contemporary haunted house movies. You can also believe that Nicole Kidman could be driven insane with the amount of care she is paying to her children’s disease because she is a raging bitch throughout most of the movie. In fact, you kind of wish that her kids were the ones to kill her so that she’d shut the fuck up. Did I mention that the fog got thicker because she was attempting to leave the home she was haunting? Well that was why, but since I fell asleep while writing this review, I’m not even sure I’m making sense right now. If you’ve never seen this movie before and like haunted house movies, I recommend checking this out, but if you’ve seen it before, do yourself a favor and hold off on repeat viewings as much as possible so that it doesn’t lose anything with repetition.
