The Possession.

A pg13 horror movie about demonic possession.  Ok I heard about this movie from my 18 year old students. Students who think the new Star Wars movies are old.  So I watched this trailer. Cool.  A Jewish take on excorcism and demons. Thats a fresh spin on this genre.  I wish it wasn’t another girl who got possessed.  Oh well, shit happens.  I also wish this wasnt a pg13, lets maximize our profits horror movie. Well thats a given in this crappy 21st century Amerika.

So you got Divorced parents and angry kids ( if you dont get married and have kids, you dont have to worry about the possession stuff i guess). Little girl buys a fancy box at yard sale.  its covered in Ancient Elvish runes, or Hebrew. I dunno, i watched the Hobbit again today.  The dad is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, he was also the Dad in Supernatural! So he is used to this shit.  He is good and i hope to see him in more films.  Ok, I wont spoil the movie. Ill just say that there is a
Dibbuk in the box, and a crap load of creepy moths.  All kinds of creepy stuff happens. Well, pg13 creepy.  Well, creepy if you are an 18 year old art student, maybe.  So the only thing to do is to get a Jew to help.  I liked that. Id like to see more movies with Jewish lore and scary stuff. Just to be different.  Maybe you wouldnt. I know, i know, you dont like Jews, but your an idiot.  See, the lil girl getting possessed thing is kinda overplayed, so you have to have a fresh approach.  I appreciate the new angle and the fact that people other than old celibate catholics can exorcise a demon. Maybe the new movie can have a buddhist monk, or a Eastern Orthodox priest, or a Brown wizard who lives in the forest with a bunch of hedgehogs and rabbits!
So its an ok movie. Not really scary, but it was well done.  Decent story and acting. Nice direction and filming.  A little bit too many scenes of - “oops the lights went out, where did the thing go? Oh its behind me.”  Of course its behind you. Duh!  I am glad i didnt pay to see this in the theater, but it was ok for a Netflix experience.

I give this a B for good acting and Jewish perspective.

Oh man, I almost forgot! The best part of this movie involves an MRI. Aint never seen that before. Makes the $1000 bill for an mri worth every penny.

Very interesting looking. is it art film? is it scifi?

The Awakening -  A British ghost story set in 1920s. A young woman is a supernatural debunker and a ghost hunter.  She went to college, smokes and wears pants. How modern.  The guy from the Wire is a school teacher who entices her to come back to his haunted school and find out whats going on.  There is a ghost boy in the school. The investigation begins. Science will win out, but there is more to this tale that she bargained for.

So no spoilers on this film.  It was a nice movie.  The main actress, Rebecca Hall, was quite good.  Dominic West, who I am told is an utter ass, was also good as the teacher/ war vet.  The school is actually an old Downton Abbey house.  A massive, spooky place where no one should live.  The building would need a massive staff just to keep it dust free. Add in a bunch of those spotty little school boys from The Wall and youd need an army of workers.  There are only a small group.  Maybe the ghost does the dusting, lawn mowing, gardening and stuff.  Ok, the creepy gardener does the gardening, but you know what Im getting at.  Not enough folks working.  So the main lady wanders the halls with her electric devices, searching for the culprits.  Trouble ensues.  The movie has a delightful creepiness to it.  I am not saying its really scary, but it is very atmospheric.  I enjoyed it.   It dragged and got emotional, and thats when it lost me.  It needed more ghosts and sex, less hugging and blah blah blah.  That sounds very American of me, but seriously, it got slow and meandering towards the end.  As if it didnt know how to finish. It did its job of being creepy and British and for that i am grateful.

I give this movie a B.  Solid acting, A decent story.  Creepy.  Ghosts and dark places.  It could have had an A with a tighter script, more scares and a more solid finish.

Sauna. A Finish horror ghost art house movie.  I really enjoyed this movie.  It is a slow film with a creepy vibe.  It is set in 1595 on the Russian Fininish border.  A small group of men are mapping out the border, traveling into a creepy swamp, where they find an ancient Sauna and an old village.  The sauna is some sort of concrete bunker where evil goes for a refreshing steam and a scrub.  I liked the characters, which all seem rather crappy people, as I imagine everyone in 1595 would be.  They all carry the sins and guilt of war with them into the swamp.  The setting was very refreshing. Makes me want to investigate the lore and history of that area.

This isnt a Jumpy scarey movie.  It doesn’t have gore.  It has some messed up ghosts or whatever, but not often.  The film is about the characters and their baggage.  Im not really sure what was going on with the sauna. I attribute that to the fact that we ‘Mericans done have Saunas like this.  Just hot tubs and swimming pools.  So i feel like there is more of a cultural identification with the Sauna than i have for it.  That said, still a good movie.

I give it a B+ for original setting, good characters and some creepy stuff that ill remember.

Elysium - by the dude that made District 9. neato.  Matt Damon(5’10”) as a cyborg, or whatever.  He’s poor, he’s mad, and he wants to kill rich people. Damn you 1%, damn you.
OK, im joking, im sure the movie has great story and splosions and robots and shanty towns and rich white people and guns and stuff.

Fresh Meat. Looks like a fun cannibal film from New Zealand

The Bay  - directed by Barry Levinson ( he directed Rain man and Good Morning Vietnam).  This is one of those Found-Footage horror movies. It is about a medical disaster at a small town on the Chesapeake Bay during their 4th of July festival.  The film is narrated by a young lady who was a student reporter during the event.  The story is told because it was suppressed by the Government. Bastards!  So the young reporter follows the events as the day gets worse.

Ill not put any spoilers in this.  It is a kind of Eco-save the planet- dont pollute kind of horror movie. Chicken farmers are dumping their waste into the bay. Damn you Chicken Farmers!  So as the cute reporter is covering the event, people start getting sick. BARF! Then it gets gross. barf some more.  The movie covers this towns demise and then sort mentions the cover up.

So I read that folks thought the acting was lame.  I thought it was ok.  People are too damn critical these days.  The story was fine. Seemed a bit coincidental that all this happens on the 4th, but fuck it. shit happens.  The editing between different found videos flowed along smoothly.  Most things seemed “believable”.  The tone of the movie was good and had a nice sense of doom.  The gore was realistic and fun (barf).  I am not saying this is the best movie ever made, but I am saying that I enjoyed it, and what more can I ask for on a Sunday evening after working all day instead of making art like i had planned.  Maybe that sentence was a bit too long.  I wish the movie had more footage from the lead reporter cute girl person. Her youthful innocence added to the sense of What the Fuck and fear of unexpected disaster.  Some of the other footage was cool, but didnt really add to the story.  The CDC guys came across as morons or uncaring evil government workers, and I kinda sorta don’t think they would be like that in real life.  So the lack of some more focused characters left me a bit uncaring.  Sure there was a little girl who was sick, but who was she anyway? Dont care.  Oh, and the  good looking rich, young, rich, just had a baby couple who could afford to rent a fancy boat for the day. Sure they had this little baby, but that damn baby couldnt act. Just sat there, looking around.  Didnt care about them other than that they carried the story along.  So the film had some issues, but watch it anyway.
Look, I am not a hippie, but I am a follower of science. My father was an environmental scientist, long before people thought we needed them.  So I come from a background that clicks with this movies Green hippie message.  It is the 21st century and our waterways are still crap. Way to go Americans.  Especially all you Global Warming peeps, want to fix the world by cant get the water in your backyard clean. So the movie made me look up the current state of the Chesapeake Bay and it is crappy.  Its full of run off pollutants.  Stuff like fertilizers, animal waste, chemical waste and other stuff that we all use.  The fertilizers come from the farms as well as all those green lawns you idiots got to have.  Why the hell are you wanting a yard full of grass that doesnt want to grow there?  So the Bay is still full of toxins and animal populations suffer, which effects us.  Well, enough of that rant, but the movie did cause me to go read articles about it.  So in my book, thats a good thing.

Here is  why you should watch the film;
-It addresses a real issue about pollution of our waterways.
-It has some realistic scary gore events that could happen, but not, but maybe?
-The cute reporter was cute.
-Well shot found footage added to sense of the real. sort of.

I give this movie a solid B.  Good ideas, decent acting and film work, real issues used in a horror movie, gross effects.
Bad things were the lack of core characters I liked, a lack of explaining why a cover up, lack of more solid description of what happened after.

Uh oh, Wolverine can’t heal. dang.

Movie of the Night - The Devil’s Rock

This is an interesting supernatural horror film set during WW2. Two commandos stumble upon a Nazi fort that summoned a demon. A really hot demon, with sexy horns and no clothes.  It is a simple story so no point in going into it.  It has a Nazi and a Kiwi guy and a hot demon chick, lots of intestines and some squishy bloody bits.  It was a fun movie with a cast of a few, and maybe 3 sets?  If you have netflix streaming and want to see a movie such as this, have at it.  Just keep in mind I drew through most of it and sort but not really watched. 
I give this new zealand horror flick a B-/B.  B- for a kind of limited story and cast, B for cool idea involving Nazis and demon chick.

Movie of the Night - Sinister
starring Ethan Hawke, a hot british lady, some kids, a deputy guy and that Old guy that was a senator.

This movie was directed by Scott Derrickson. He also directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and that crappy Day the Earth Stood Still. He also wrote this creepy story.  Sinister is a movie about Ethan hawke moving into a house where a family was murdered so he can write a true crime novel.  Too bad for him that was a road to ruin.  Is that a spoiler?  Anyway, Spoilers!
So This movie mainly takes place in this one ranch style house.  The scary bad guy is called Beguhl, or Begool.  he is an old celtic god who looks like the comic book guy Lobo, or the metal singer King Diamond.  He has makeup on his face. scary.  Ethan does a great job.  The movie is really creepy.  There are some scenes of spookiness.  I liked it for the most part. I felt gripped by the fear.  There were ghost kids with mud on their faces. Ghost kids are creepy.  So ethan finds some old 8mm movies of murders.  this activates the Begool guy and his horde of dead kids.  Ethan realizes he is boned.Too late.
The bad guy doesnt really do anything. I find that annoying.  The ghost kids just run around behind Ethan alot.  Why the hell wont someone turn on some lights in that spooky house.  Just leave all the lights on. Ok, the power goes out some, but still. All lights, all the time.  But he seems too lazy to flick a switch.  Begool the scary guy peeks through bushes and lurks in the back of the 8mm movies.  So im left to wonder some stuff.  Why do the ghost kids have to be covered with dirt and stuff. couldnt they be all clean since they dont have bodies to collect dirt?  Why does Begool lurk around in old movies? How the hell did he get into them in the firlst place?  Why is he wearing pants, a black duster and boots? Wouldnt a Celtic god be skyclad, free and easy.  and the end is rather lame.  I found it to be one of those ending that seemed to be forced in so the writers could make the damn movie. never the less, it was a creepy flick. Ethan is a fine actor and he really made the film.  that is important since its 98% him, wandering around dark hallways, watching crappy haunted movies, researching stuff, and looking nervous.

I give this movie a c+/b-.  c+ for a goofy bad guy and lack of plot, b- for being creepy and Ethan hawke, and the hot brit wife.