Horror 102: Foreign Horror

The Vanishing is a 1988 Dutch film about the abduction of a woman, Saskia, from a rest stop.  This movie takes a different tack, as you know right up front who kidnapped her and why.  Saskia’s boyfriend, Rex, has been tormented for three years wondering what happened to her.  He starts to get postcards from Saskia’s abductor, which frustrates him even more. 

Eventually, the two meet and the abductor, a mild-mannered chemistry professor named Raymond, tells Rex that in order to find out what happened to Saskia, he must be willing to experience what she did.  Rex stupidly, foolishly agrees to Raymond’s demands.  Is knowing what happened to her better than not knowing?  Rex soon finds out.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m claustrophobic.  The final few scenes in The Vanishing have stuck with me for decades and are the stuff of my nightmares.  I can barely watch the end of the movie without getting anxious. 

That’s horror done right.

Horror 102: Creature Feature Horror

The Relic (1997) is one of my all-time favorite movies.  My bestie and I caught it at the dollar theater waaaaay back in the day.  A detective, Lt. D’Agosta is investigating the decapitation deaths of the crew of a cargo ship and they lead him to Chicago’s Museum of Natural History, where he meets an evolutionary biologist, Dr. Green.  More murders happen in the museum and Green and D'Agosta have to work together to discover the culprit; which just so happens to be the Kothoga, a South American chimeric lizard god. The beast is quickly and constantly evolving due to rapid mutations in its DNA.

Horror 102: Folk Horror

1973’s The Wicker Man.  Starring the great Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle.  A cop, Sgt. Neil Howie, played by Edward Woodward, arrives on the island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl named Rowan.  Sgt. Howie tries to conduct an investigation, but does not get much help from the locals.  He becomes certain that they are lying to him about Rowan’s existence.  

Sgt. Howie is a celibate Christian, and when he realizes that Summerisle’s citizens are pagans, he becomes disturbed by their behavior and frustrated that they won’t help him in finding out what happened to Rowan.  What Sgt. Howie doesn’t know is that his presence on the island is deliberate, and what awaits him is drop-dead terrifying.  

I watched this movie, bemused at the antics of the locals, and when I realized what was going on and saw Sgt. Howie’s ultimate fate, I was mesmerized.  Folk horror is usually hit or miss for me, but The Wicker Man slaps! 

Horror 102: Satanic Horror

I watched Angel Heart (1987) shortly after it came out on video.  The hype surrounding the movie at the time was the fact that Lisa Bonet (Denise from The Cosby Show) starred in the movie and did things that “soiled” her “good girl” image.  But that’s a discussion for another day.  I was a pre-teen when I first saw Angel Heart, and therefore a lot of it got past me.  It wasn’t until I watched it again when I was older that I understood what was going on, and bay-bee....!

The movie is based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel, published in 1978.  Basically, a well-dressed mysterious gentleman procures the services of private investigator Harry Angel to track down a singer named Johnny Favorite.  Apparently, Johnny Favorite is in debt to the gentleman, one Mr. Louis Cyphere, played to the T by Robert DeNiro.  Harry accepts the job, but soon finds himself deep into a web of mystery and intrigue, and waaaay over his head.

The ending scene, interspersed with the closing credits, sticks with me to this day.  I’ll never look at an elevator ride the same.

Horror 102: My Favorite Horror Movies

 As you know, Dilettantes…the 10th month is here and I am overjoyed!  It’s my favorite time of year and last year, I learned how to celebrate it as only I can.  Last year, I began a series called Horror 101, where I brought to the forefront a mixture of my favorite horror novels, horror stories, horror movies and horror TV shows.

This year, I plan to continue the series.  I am going to focus strictly on horror movies.  When I first came up with this idea, I foolishly thought I could do a top 10 list of my favorite horror movies.  I shared this idea with Noob, a fellow horror head, and she promptly laughed in my face.

Update

 Hey Dilettantes!

I've been in Senegal for six weeks now and have finally gotten over jet lag.  So far, all is good.  I love my new job, I like my new apartment, and I've made a few friends.  One of the best things about moving here is knowing that I wasn't going to be the only black woman at the job.  It is such a relief to be amongst my tribe...but I gotta brush up on my conversational French.  

Now that things are settling down, I plan to resume posting on a regular basis.  I got plans to celebrate the great month of October and my favorite holiday, Halloween, with the next phase in my homage to all things horror.  More to come in that regard.

Just wanted to touch base with you guys!  I'll check in with you soon.

Update!

Hey Dilettantes!!

June has been a very busy month and I'm off my writing schedule (obvs).  My posting here in Indonesia has ended and I am going home for a short break before moving to Africa.  I've accepted a position in Senegal and I'm really excited about it. The opportunity for new opportunities awaits.

I've enjoyed my time in Asia, and it's time to give the Motherland some love.  I will be traveling for the next two days, and after spending some time with my loved ones, I will be moving on.

If you'd told me ten years ago that I would be a world traveler, I wouldn't have believed you.  Even though it was a dream of mine, at that time in my life I couldn't even believe it was possible.  I was in a lot of mental and emotional pain and couldn't see past it.  But now, I have the life that I want and worked hard for.

Goes to show you how funny life can be.

Terminator: Dark Fate

We all know that T2: Judgment Day is when the Terminator movie franchise peaked.  Everything after that has been garbage.  The franchise hit an all-time low with Genisys.  That movie pissed me off so bad.  It was STUPID.  So I was not the least bit pressed when they came out with Dark Fate.  I had no interest in seeing it.

One day, I was sitting around with nothing to do and decided to watch a movie from one of my user-friendly movie websites.  Dark Fate popped up and I said, “Fuck it…it’s free.  Might as well kill some time.”  The only thing in the movie that had my attention was this cutie…

...and we DID NOT get an obligatory Terminator ass shot like we usually do. Trust me, I looked.  

Basically, Dark Fate is a discount T2 with women protagonists and lackluster writing. I did not buy the central protagonist as a revolutionary military leader and the movie made no effort to convince me otherwise.  And apparently, Terminators have reached an evolutionary dead end.  Being able to split into two parts just wasn’t that impressive and it felt like it should have been.  Maybe if they hadn’t put that in the trailer…

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about Dark Fate.  Everything you need to know about the movie, you saw it in the trailer.  While it wasn’t nearly as shitty as Genisys, they could have kept this one.  Grade: D

Midsommar

This is a folk horror movie that came out in 2019.  It’s about a

group of “friends” that travel to Sweden to attend a festival at the behest of one of the members of a pagan cult.  One of the “friends” is a young woman named Dani who is grieving the loss of her entire family.  Her sister, who was bipolar, murdered their parents and then committed suicide.  Dani is the girlfriend of Christian, one of four guys who make up the rest of the main cast.  

It is established early on that Christian and Dani’s relationship is on the rocks; in fact, Christian has been wanting out of the relationship for the past year (according to his friends).  The only reason he hasn’t broken up with her is because she’s grieving and has no one else to depend on.  Christian’s friends are assholes, and he has some asshole tendencies as well (birds of a feather and all that). Pelle is the friend that invites everyone to attend his family’s midsummer festival, and things get interesting shortly after they arrive.

The only thing that truly annoyed me is how Dani has no agency.  She goes along with what’s happening and doesn’t question anything (outside of the tea the pagans give her to drink).  She senses that Christian wants to break up with her because she’s so needy, but she never really confronts him about it.  I think that if she had, that would have made the movie’s ending a lot stronger.

Midsommar is about two and a half hours long and honestly, it could have used a bit more editing. There were a few scenes that could have been cut out or down to shorten the time but that does not mean the movie was boring.  Slow at first, yes, but not at all uninteresting.  You have to pay attention because the director, Ari Aster, packs a lot into certain scenes and in background images.  He is very good when it comes to the details.

Midsommar is worth a watch.  Grade: B.

Parasite

I was finally able to catch Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite.  It is an excellent movie.  I’m going to keep this review as short as possible so not to ruin the experience.  Basically, the Kims, a devious poor family that lives in a semi-basement apartment, manage to finesse their way into four high-paying service positions for the wealthy and somewhat naïve Park family.  The Kims are some straight up hustlers and the way they slide into those service positions is nothing short of brilliant.  However, their actions have some serious consequences.

The way the film is shot is amazing.  Bong Joon Ho uses vertical cinematography (in this case, stairways and hills) to convey wealth.  It is very clear that the world that the Parks inhabit is worlds different from the world of the Kims.  There is a discussion among the Kims at the halfway mark of the film about how money fixes things.  Mrs. Kim says that “money is an iron,” and she is 100% correct.  Who the title of the film refers to seems obvious at first, but as the movie progresses, that descriptor becomes fluid and it is not so easy to brand just one family as parasitic. 

If you get the chance to watch Parasite, do it.  It is a movie that requires multiple viewings and it won’t be a waste of time to do so.  Grade: A.