Wednesday, October 14, 2015

31 Horror Films in 31 Days Challenge - The First Half Highlights



The #31HorrorFilms31Days Challenge is halfway over! In case you haven't been following along on Twitter, you can scroll through the slideshow above to see what I've been watching these last couple weeks (make sure to mouse over the images to see what I had to say about each one). To sum up...

The Good. Highlights so far have been Lyle (full review here), The Final Girls, and Crystal Lake Memories (a doc about all the Friday the 13th movies that I’d never seen before). Lyle is a small slice of modern (dare I say feminist?) horror inspired by Rosemary’s Baby; it’s short but packs a wallop and a lot to think about. The Final Girls is a horror comedy that won me over despite being a horror comedy (and that’s not easy, let me tell you). Aside from those, nothing new has really stuck with me as of yet, but I did watch a lot of oldies but goodies – some Friday the 13th movies, The House of the Devil, All Cheerleaders Die. Oh, and I finally got to see Witch’s Brew, which is a low budget horror comedy my husband has a small part in. So that was fun!

The So-Bad-It’s-Good. Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest takes the cake for this category. Storylines include: a strain of corn that can grow in a city plot with terrible soil, out of season no less; an adoptive father who tries to sell said strain of corn to his company; a twelve-year-old who preaches the gospel of He Who Walks Behind the Rows and gets tons of hardened “urban” teenagers to follow him; Charlize Theron getting brutally killed by a corn monster; and basketball. Pure gold.

The Meh. The Blood Lands definitely belongs here. It was a serviceable home invasion movie that reminded me a lot of Them (Ils, in French); sadly, though, it wasn’t as suspenseful, and the ending... well, I guess I prefer my endings to be more harrowing than uplifting. As I mentioned in my tweet, I also wasn’t a fan of the non-scary pig masks. The Green Inferno also lands squarely in the “meh” for me (full review here).

The Ugly. I deliberated a lot before putting Exeter in this slot… but after much consideration, and despite some lovely, creepy visuals, I have to admit that this movie just didn’t do it for me. The kills were cool, but the overall movie wasn’t scary at all, and the slick production could only go so far in concealing the fact that this movie had no heart. Knock Knock is also “ugly,” but for different reasons. Much like The Green Inferno, I think what Roth was purportedly trying to say and what he did say are two very different things, the latter being fairly nonsensical. However, where I could sort of ignore that and just ride the thrills with The Green Inferno, I found little to enjoy in Knock Knock. It didn’t scare me, and it certainly didn’t get me clutching my pearls like I’m sure it was meant to. I found the mind games tame, the story muddled, and the tone inconsistent. Sorry, guys!

Tune in two weeks from now for the rest of the challenge results. And let me know in the comments what movies you’re watching this October!

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