What did You Watch Last Week (05/10 - 11/10) CLOSED

Sorry to Bother You - Strange, but enjoyable. 7/10

Bound - Very good. 8/10

To Kill a Mockingbird - Also very good. 8/10

Young Adult - 7/10

Halloween - Classic. 8.5/10

Spotlight - 7.5/10


First Time Viewings:

Little Shop of Horrors (1986, Frank Oz)
Enjoyable musical with fun performances and an amusing story.
7/10

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971, John D. Hancock)
Interesting psychological horror with a very good score.
7/10

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007, Tim Burton)
It's well made and the cast is pretty good, but it never completely pulled me into the story.
6/10

Strait-Jacket (1964, William Castle)
This one is well acted and pretty engaging throughout, but I had mixed feelings on the twist, which held it back.
6.5/10

The Quiet Family (1998, Jee-woon Kim)
This one has good performances all around and I found it to be a pretty enjoyable dark comedy.
7.5/10

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Jee-woon Kim)
My least favorite of the four I've seen from this director so far, but still pretty good and the lead actress gives a very strong performance.
7/10

Secret of the Blue Room (1933, Kurt Neumann)
Starts out interesting, but I cared less and less as it went along.
5.5/10

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920, John S. Robertson)
An okay telling of the classic story. 
6/10

Who Can Kill a Child? (1976, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador)
Pretty good one with an engaging story and a strong ending.
7/10

Diary of a Madman (1963, Reginald Le Borg)
Vincent Price is a delight as always and I enjoyed the story of this one.
7/10

Excision (2012, Richard Bates Jr.)
An interesting and sometimes disturbing film about a troubled teenager.
7/10

The Gorgon (1964, Terence Fisher)
Pretty good one with horror legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
7/10


Repeat Viewings:

The Wolfman (2010, Joe Johnston)
Hadn't seen this in probably 9 or 10 years. It has good production design and costumes, the cinematography is really good at times, and the cast is solid. Pretty good score too. I'm not big on the writing for the character Anthony Hopkins plays, some of the CGI isn't all that great, and I feel they don't fully explore some of the more interesting aspects of the plot. A mixed bag overall.
6/10

Beetlejuice (1988, Tim Burton)
Enjoyed this even more this time. It's a very creative and entertaining movie and the cast is awesome.
8/10


Movie Awards:

BEST FILM: Beetlejuice
BEST ACTOR: Alec Baldwin (Beetlejuice)
BEST ACTRESS: Im Soo-jung (A Tale of Two Sisters)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Catherine O'Hara (Beetlejuice)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shelly Johnson (The Wolfman)
BEST SCORE: Danny Elfman (Beetlejuice)
BEST SCRIPT: Michael McDowell, Larry Wilson, & Warren Skaaren (Beetlejuice)
BEST DIRECTOR: Tim Burton (Beetlejuice)

Any interest in any of the others?

Halloween - 10/10

First Time Viewings:

The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020) - Netflix
7/10

Ghost Ship (2002) - DVD
6/10

Devil (2010) - Netflix
7/10

1922 (2017) - Netflix
8/10

Hocus Pocus (1993) - Disney+
8/10

StageFright (1987) - YouTube
7.5/10

Sleepwalkers (1992) - TV
5.5/10

Repeat Viewings:

Misery (1990) - DVD
8/10

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007, Tim Burton)
Love the music and the performances were pretty good. Visually it’s a bit stagey though.
8/10

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Jee-woon Kim)
An interesting, but also over-complicated ghost story.
6/10

The Wolfman (2010, Joe Johnston)
I couldn’t even finish this one. Thought it was very poor and dull.
3/10

Beetlejuice (1988, Tim Burton)
Not my favourite Burton by far, but an enjoyably weird one.
7/10

The Living Daylights (1987) - 7/10

The Shining (1980) - 8/10

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - 8/10

First Time Viewing:

Evil Dead 2 (1987; Sam Raimi) – This is supposed to be a comedy, right? I haven’t seen the first one, they say it’s more serious. I enjoyed it for the inventive camera-work, Bruce Campbell’s committed performance and its creative shocks, but I’m not sure whether it’ll have any rewatch value for me.
7/10

The Haunting (1963; Robert Wise) – This classic comes with such a stellar reputation, that I felt like I was going to watch the Citizen Kane of haunted house movies. I appreciate what it was trying to do and as a psychological drama it’s fairly interesting, but there is just not nearly enough terror. This gets the set-up with the various conflicts between the characters right, but then fails to deliver any meaningful or engaging plot. I also dislike how it focused on just one single character, with the others not getting enough screen time. I would’ve preferred had the story been told from different points of view. So in the end the entire tale only amounts to a neurotic woman’s overwrought imagination. But then I already disliked the Shirley Jackson novel, so perhaps it’s just me.
6/10

The Possession Of Hannah Grace (2018; Diederik Van Rooijen) – This is like the lousy version of The Autopsy Of Jane Doe. It starts with a generic exorcism scene and never really recovers relying on cheap jump scares and a predictable plot.
3/10

Psycho IV (1990; Mick Garris) – Clearly at this point the Psycho franchise had burned out with little new to offer. This tries to delve into Norman Bates’ childhood but Henry Thomas while a fine actor never even comes close to matching Perkin’s original performance. The latter is still around without having much to do just hanging around the phone chatting with a radio host (CCH Pounder).
4/10

Scary Stories to tell in the Dark (2019; André Øvredal) - Oh dear, this was just painfully dull and largely unoriginal. The kids were bland and boring, the plot took ages to get started, and it had barely one single original bone in its entire body, borrowing from better movies. There is one scene with spiders which reminded me of a very similar sequence in The Believers (1987).
3/10

Silent House (2011; Chris Kentis, Laura Lau) – Reportedly shot in one single take (although you can tell the film-makers actually cheated) this remake of a Uruguayan movie has a fine lead with Elizabeth Olsen, but plot-wise very little of interest going on, with most of the movie consisting of the characters stumbling through a dimly-lit dilapidated building.
4/10

TV

The Secret Of Crickley Hall (2012) – British TV-mini-series based on a book by horror author James Herbert. After the disappearance of their youngest son a family moves to a country house with a sinister past. The story of the house is told via flashbacks. It’s only mildly interesting and barely qualifies as horror.
4/10

Repeat Viewing:

Lake Mungo (2008; Joel Anderson) – This subtle and intelligent found footage chiller is a slow-burn, eschewing annoying horror clichés like loud jump-scares or dumb screaming teenagers. It is a fairly believable story, thanks to the unshowy performances but the restraint also means that some people would quickly dismiss it as boring.
7/10

Nightwatch (1997; Ole Bornedal) – Bornedal directed this remake of his own Danish surprise hit. A law student takes a job as a night-watchman at a mortuary and becomes the target of a serial-killer. I know people always say the original is better, but I actually prefer this US-remake. It was clearly riding on the Scream-inspired 90s slasher wave, and the killer is easy to guess, but it has a better than average cast (Ewan McGregor, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte, Brad Dourif and an uncredited John C. Reilly), and some nice black humour.
6.5/10

The Others (2001; Alejandro Amenabar) – A beautifully made, elegant ghost story, featuring what is (in my opinion) one of Nicole Kidman’s finest performances. But it’s also perhaps a bit too much on the gentle side, and once you know the twist you realize that the movie’s concept isn’t particularly scary. Just like The Orphanage this is more like a dark fairy-tale than full-blown horror.
7.5/10

Everything goes to Beetlejuice.

Evil Dead II - 7.5/10

The Haunting - 7/10

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - 7/10 

Silent House (2011) - 5/10

The Others - 6.5/10