Posts

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

-
Image
In his introduction for his review of Rick Rosenthal's Halloween 2 , Roger Ebert memorably bemoaned, "It's a little sad to witness a fall from greatness, and that's what we get in Halloween II ." That exact sentiment can all too easily and distressingly be applied to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel to his own 1974 groundbreaking teen slasher masterpiece. Halloween 2 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 share a few things in common: both are 1980s sequels to 1970s slasher landmarks, both increase the graphic displays of their villains' carnage, neither comes close to living up to the suspense, horror, and artistry of their predecessors, and most astonishingly, both sequels are at least co-directed by the same director as the original. It's profoundly upsetting and more than a little disconcerting to consider the fact that Tobe Hooper, the director and co-writer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , is once again seated in the director...
Post a Comment
Read more

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

-
Image
When one observes the second part of the title, 10 Cloverfield Lane , their mind immediately wanders back to Matt Reeves' 2008 sci-fi found-footage horror film, Cloverfield , in which a small group of friends spends a single night fleeing the streets of New York City after a horde of aliens crash-lands in a nearby ocean and destroys everything in their sight. Eight years later, a sequel of sorts was released, but upon first glance, there doesn't appear to be much of a connection between Reeves' action-heavy monster movie and the decidedly quieter, more restrained, and mystery-driven chamber thriller devised by Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. The reason is obvious: 10 Cloverfield Lane originated from a spec script by Campbell and Stuecken titled The Cellar . It began its life as an original, standalone psychological horror film. During production, however, the filmmakers noticed core similarities to Cloverfield and decided to make it what producer J.J. Abr...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Evil Dead (1981)

-
Image
Sam Raimi's feature directorial debut, The Evil Dead , is widely considered a classic in the horror genre. On Rotten Tomatoes, it boasts an approval rating of 85% from the critics, with an average rating of 7.8/10, and, not that this matters to me because the RT audience are the biggest bunch of idiots on the cinematic planet, that percentage is nearly matched by an audience score of 84%. Therefore, on both sides of the movie-going aisle, The Evil Dead is a success. While it brings me a degree of joy to shave against the grain of popular opinion, it mostly brings disappointment to say that, of all the critically acclaimed horror classics I've currently seen,  The Evil Dead is hands down the worst and most nearly insufferable piece of tripe, a phantasmagoria of gore, decapitations, and bodily decompositions. It has the unrestrained feel of a young, inexperienced filmmaker who just got prematurely released from his film school, purchased a camera, gathered a few friends in a chea...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

-
Image
In Brian De Palma and Lawrence D. Cohen's 1976 supernatural horror film, Carrie , an adaptation of the first novel published by Stephen King, there's a pivotal moment in which Carrie White, the titular telekinetic protagonist, finally asserts herself to her fanatical mother, Margaret, and reveals her knowledge that her father, Ralph, despite Margaret's assertion that the Devil infiltrated his body and "carried him off," abandoned them for another woman. Who is this other woman that Ralph ran away with, and did he impregnate her with another telekinetic offspring? Both of those questions are answered in The Rage: Carrie 2  by screenwriter Rafael Moreu, who uses that single line of exposition from De Palma's bullied-revenge classic as the jumping-off point for a belated sequel that lacks the astonishingly animated atmosphere, campy sense of humor, suspenseful buildup, and colorful characters that made its predecessor alternately entertaining, tragic, and passion...
Post a Comment
Read more