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Housebound (2014)
Housebound (2014)
2014 | Comedy, Mystery
Neither funny nor scary enough to fully accomplish what it wants to, but it's *almost* wild enough to. Hurts to go hard on this one because many of its flaws come from simply how ambitious this is on such a small budget - so it's at least always admirable in spite of them; but I can't look past how rough those first 45 minutes are nor how it largely abandons the loads upon loads of potential this premise has in favor of its eventual rug-pull twist to sort of carry the movie from there (which it at least does pretty okay). Because of this we see supporting characters who crave to be more fleshed-out and intriguing plot elements you wish they ran with more instead of more borrowed platitudes. But as aforementioned, those last 50 or so minutes are a fucking RIOT (if still painfully underdeveloped, at least it's fun to watch - with some unexpectedly potent emotion [again, underwritten though]). Even when it falls flat on its face there's a charming earnestness here that can't be denied. It's decent but far from the revolutionary cinema everyone seems to think it is - though it could have been.
  
Underwater (2020)
Underwater (2020)
2020 | Horror, Sci-Fi
Decent, what is essentially 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘒 π˜™π˜¦π˜±π˜°π˜³π˜΅ meets π˜‹π˜¦π˜¦π˜±π˜Έπ˜’π˜΅π˜¦π˜³ 𝘏𝘰𝘳π˜ͺ𝘻𝘰𝘯 without the fun, tantalizing lore of either. First 15 minutes and last 15 minutes are fucking banger (and terrifying, case #5,000 on why I'll never so much as dip a toe in the ocean), though everything sandwiched between is a mixed bag - I'll give it credit that it gets right into it with maybe only 30 or so seconds of exposition; but it isn't always intense enough to be this brisk and the editing can be a bit of a mess, so much is easy to miss. I'll credit Stewart acting the house down for saving this movie, while the rest of the cast... exists. Occasionally falls into your conventional modern horror movie traps but not nearly as much as you'd expect. Looks way better in the interior environments as opposed to the actual underwater stuff, but otherwise it does what it should - definitely has some scary as hell parts but never truly coagulates into a whole. Not sure why this was put on hold for so long, but it is nice to see T.J. Miller return to disaster movies.
  
The Witches
The Witches
Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl | 1983 | Children
10
8.5 (19 Ratings)
Book Rating
Awesome book. Will reread it to my children multiple times.
The Witches by Roald Dahl, like all of his books is a classic. While some children may find it a bit on the scary side depending on their age and mentality I read it to my toddlers recently and they did just fine.

 This is a story of a young boy who goes to live with his grandmother after his parents sadly die. He was already close to his grandmother so the transition was not too hard on him. She always told him stories of witches, how they hate children and want to destroy them and also how to identify them, but he doesn't believe they are real.

 One day he goes on a vacation with his grandmother to a hotel and discovered it is also the location of the secret yearly meeting of witches. Upon this accidental discovery the boy spies on them and learns of their evil plan. Now it is up to him with the help of his grandmother to put a stop to the evil witches.

 I would rate this book 4 out of 4 or 5 out of 5 and highly recommend it.
  
Return of the Fly (1959)
Return of the Fly (1959)
1959 | Classics, Drama, Horror
5
6.2 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Vincent Price (0 more)
Its Bird, Its a Plane, No Its a Fly
Return of The Fly- im not sure if we needed a sequel to "The Fly", cause it was such a masterpiece. The good thing about this sequel that it has Vincent Price in it. It is scary and horrorfying too.

The plot: Philippe Delambre (Brett Halsey) has been wrestling with his family legacy for years, knowing that his father perished as a result of his experiments in teleportation. Though warned by his uncle Francois (Vincent Price), Philippe insists on refurbishing his father's laboratory and continuing his investigations. The idea would be bad enough on its own, but Philippe hires an assistant who calls himself Alan Hinds (David Frankham) but is actually a wanted criminal.

Bernds says his original draft of the film incorporated footage from the first Fly movie but they were not allowed to use it. He also said Vincent Price insisted on reading the script before signing on to the film. Once he did, he objected when Bernds cut down on some of his scenes for length.

You can skip this one, watch it if you seen the oringal.
  
Paper Princess (The Royals, #1)
Paper Princess (The Royals, #1)
Erin Watt | 2016
10
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
I don't even know what to say. Honestly, I saw someone else say that this book wrecked them and I was feeling masochistic, so I decided to pick it up and read it for myself. Unfortunately, I chose to pick it up around 11 o'clock at night. Wrong choice! I absolutely could not stop! I read the whole thing, straight through, until almost 4 o'clock the next morning. And the reader I got my recommendation from was right - this book absolutely did wreck me. Not so much that I ugly cried, but enough that I literally felt a hole in my heart when I was finished. Nothing could have prepared me for the ending. Some books based on high school teenagers are so cliche and immature, but Paper Princess was different and extremely refreshing. I found myself relating so much with Ella that it was almost scary. The story felt original and I like that. Throughout the whole book, I rode the roller coaster of emotions right alongside Ella. The ending has left me devastated, but I'm desperate to move on to the next book and discover what's next for Ella!
  
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LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Friend Request (2016) in Movies

Oct 6, 2020 (Updated Oct 6, 2020)  
Friend Request (2016)
Friend Request (2016)
2016 | Horror, International, Mystery
*decline*. Jesus, I usually have a wicked high tolerance for these Gen-Z-catered idiotic mainstream horror flicks but this was abysmal. I'm offended that this could even be uttered within the same sentence as the rip-roaring, unnerving, and highly idiosyncratic 𝘜𝘯𝘧𝘳π˜ͺ𝘦𝘯π˜₯𝘦π˜₯ films which - at least for a time - were required to shit on because at the time Facebook was still this relatively new and trendy thing that kids liked... but now that it's dying can we finally admit those were actually both genius *and* truly scary? Especially after this absolutely formless drivel. Flimsily acted even by these movies' low standards, and its depiction of mental illness can be generously described as execrable - it initially begins as a sort of interesting dissection of social media etiquette and the very narrow view of what we consider to be 'weird' by its standards... but then it reveals its true colors by demonizing these very real conditions/behaviors by way of shoddy technophobic bullshit. The thing is, this actually has some good horror movie imagery in it too - a fair amount - but it's made in such a repellent way that I also don't really care. Plus it's overcut to hell.
  
The Haunting  (1963)
The Haunting (1963)
1963 | Horror
The Haunted House
The Haunting- is one of the best horror movies of all time. Its scary, spooky, haunting, terrorfying, horrorfying and more.

The Plot: Dr. John Markway, an anthropologist with an interest in psychic phenomena, takes two specially selected women to Hill House, a reportedly haunted mansion. Eleanor (Julie Harris), a lonely, eccentric woman with a supernatural event in her past, and the bold Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has ESP, join John and the mansion's heir, cynical Luke (Russ Tamblyn). They are immediately overwhelmed by strange sounds and events, and Eleanor comes to believe the house is alive and speaking directly to her.

From the great novel- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

In 2010, The Guardian newspaper ranked it as the 13th-best horror film of all time. Director Martin Scorsese has placed The Haunting first on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.

The film was remade in 1999 by director Jan de Bont, starring Liam Neeson, Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson, but that version was heavily panned by critics and audiences. Dont watch that film, but instead watch this masterpiece.

I would highly reccordmend this movie.
  
HΓ€xan (1922)
HΓ€xan (1922)
1922 | Documentary, Fantasy, Horror
Very strange...
This collection of 7 silent film shorts are put together in this film Haxan. It's hard to give a plot description in a silent film collection like these. They mostly have to do with witches and the belief in witchcraft through the middle ages up through the time this movie was made. There were also elements of devils and devil worship, paganism, and the occult.

The film tried to make the point some of these people and practices were strange at the time maybe due to not a great understanding of mental illness or psychological problems of those involved.

The way the movie was divided was interesting at times and boring at other times. I definitely enjoyed the sections where there were actual moving images with dialogue cards or subtitles rather than those with still images only.

Since there was no dialogue per say, it was difficult to follow at some points; however, several of the visuals were striking and even a little scary considering this movie is almost 100 years old.

I still rather enjoyed it.

  
Lake Placid (1999)
Lake Placid (1999)
1999 | Action, Comedy, Horror
So-so freshwater Jaws spoof with lots of extra irony; somehow managed to spawn a gajillion sequels, all of them made by and featuring much less distinguished people. Folk start turning up dead in a lake in Maine; various scientists and eccentrics descend, annoying the local police and game wardens; culprit proves to be a giant Asian crocodile which has somehow found its way to North America (this is not the kind of film which worries too much about the details). All the usual tropes and plot twists ensue, played very much tongue in cheek.

You get the sense this is a film everybody involved made on a week off as a kind of joke - the snappy dialogue between the characters is the only bit of the film which truly shines, and it's the gory bits - beheadings and dismemberments which feel out of place (even some of these are played for laughs). Sort of mildly amusing and the croc model is good, but not funny and certainly not scary enough to linger in the memory. I seem to recall the 1980 movie Alligator being a lot more fun.