HOST (2020)

So good

NOTE: This is a spoiler free review. Do yourself a favor and view this film WITHOUT WATCHING THE TRAILER FIRST! You will be glad you did. A two minute trailer for a 56 minute film can give a lot away! 

Last Monday I heard about this new "computer screen" horror film called HOST. I saw the screenshot and tried not to roll my eyes. 

"Ok...another UNFRIENDED thing. Cool...I liked that one." 

Then I saw what people were saying about it and took a bit more notice. During the course of the day, reviews kept popping up all over the internet raving about the film. Now, this wasn't studio hyperbole, this was coming from horror folks I knew and respected. I zoomed :::grin::: over to Shudder to view it....but found that I was a few days early and had to wait. 

Last night...the waiting was over. 

I started watching the film on my television and stopped a few minutes in after seeing the format. 

"No...no, this needs to be seen on my computer." 

I raced to my iMac and started the film up again and I was glad that I did! It's PERFECT for late night viewing in the dark via computer. Especially in this era of covid ZOOM meetings and the Cult of Quarantine.

Host tells the tale of six people having an online seance through....ZOOM, the online meeting app. (If you are like me, you are very...VERY familiar with ZOOM right now) With their medium Seylan at the helm, they dive into the mysterious astral plane. :::::DRINK:::::  ;)

My spoiler free mini-video review can be seen here....    It's silly, but I was inspired. 

I'm not sure how they did it, to tell you the truth. I mean, the general "horror over online meeting" concept has been done for sure. The aforementioned UNFRIENDED did a really good job of bringing the paranormal and computer tech worlds together and was very entertaining. But HOST brings something new into the mix - several new things, really. 

Thanks do the wonders of SHUDDER, they didn't have to try and pad out the story to meet the requirements of a theater run film. This allowed them to keep the film down to a wondrous 56 minutes or so. They packed that time with tons of great content and a strong story.

They used small ZOOM meeting knowns to their advantage all over the place which added a lot to the production. People waiting to get into the space, putting themselves on mute, messages popping up saying the meeting was going to end soon, and microphones being turned up to max so people could hear things better all had me grinning from ear to ear. There are more things in this particular bucket that I will let viewers discover for themselves. 

Making use of the new, virtual environment created with the use of six or seven separate locations joined together via cameras and microphones added tension in very interesting ways - again, spoiler free. 

I'd love to see another film on the making of this film, to be honest. Gemma Hurley, Rob Savage, and Jed Shepherd wrote a stellar script and Savage's direction was amazing. Picture staring at a large painting of a town, then zooming into a few of the town's locations and back out again as you stared at it. That's what HOST managed to feel like. You see all six folks, then from time to time you explore one of their apartments or homes. It was incredibly dynamic and engaging. It really brings a lot of NEW to a sub-genre that I thought was tapped out. 

But...more than anything else mentioned here...the acting. 

Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova, Caroline Ward, Seylan Baxter, and Edward Linard sold the film 100%. Subtle, nuanced, and BELIEVABLE performances all around brought a much needed feeling that these were all real people. They seemed like they all knew each other and that they had a history with each other. Subtle changes in the way they interacted felt very real to the point where I actually forgot that they were actors for a moment. So, when the shite hit the fan and things started to go south, I was concerned for their well being. 

AND....they didn't look like they were "acting scared", they looked like they were truly freaked out. 

I'm going to stop there before I say too much. 

HOST brings a ton of fun to the table and is WELL worth a viddy. I'll be watching it again this weekend...on my computer....in the dark....

After you watch you can check out the interview with Rob Savage here:
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/behind-the-scenes-of-host-a-british-horror-film-shot-on-zoom

The Night Sitter

A quickie movie review so I can get back to packing up to move. :)





I just gave THE NIGHT SITTER a watch and it was a ton of fun! This smaller budget nugget is just a well shot, "stuck in the house with evil" hoot with some fantastic practical effects work and impressive acting.

From IMDB:
"A con artist poses as a babysitter to steal from a wealthy occult enthusiast. One of the kids she's sitting unwittingly summons a trio of witches known as The Three Mothers."

No, it's not an add-on for the Three Mother's Trilogy from Mr. Argento. This is another group of witches. :::grin:::  Written and directed by Abiel Bruhn and John Rocco, the film starts off a bit slow, but ramps up nicely and pays off in a lot of fantastic ways.

I loved the lighting and the quality of the shoot. It really showed a great amount of skill and made the film even more enjoyable to watch. Elyse Dufour in the lead role is hypnotic (She played Frankie in THE WALKING DEAD) and Amber Neukum's over the top possessed character totally reminded me of the fun demons in DEMONS. Just a lot of fun.

If you're looking for a fun Christmas themed tale to settle in with as the summer sets in, give this a go! It really brought a smile to my face!

Blood Demon Rising

Blood Demon Rising. What to say....

Blood Demon is a low budget feature - no hiding that factoid. Low budget. But, the film has a heart and life to it that carries it up and out of the grim world of cheap horror and into a very entertaining space indeed.

Long and the short - there is a blood demon and people are trying to bring it into the world. There's a house of horrors amusement house involved and frat boy characters wandering along with a priest  dealing with psychos, hot vampire girls, and masked cultists.  But, it's all about how the story is presented that makes it really interesting. I've seen a lot of films in this budget range and many of them don't make the blog. Blood Demon Rising earns it's place on the blog right from the get go and manages to impress.

Lots of 3D sets as backgrounds. Not bad work, really!

While some films with a lower budget drop in 3D elements here and there to pep things up and most of the time they just come off as a little sad, BLOOD DEMON goes for the fences and uses a ton of 3D. And, it's not half bad, really. It creates a look and feel that's unique and engaging.




The film itself has the look of a cool stage play. In addition to the 3D mentioned above, they use negative space and darkness to imply a larger space and to highly the action. It's really rather smart.





When the film started, I got a little cringe. "Ut oh....what are we watching here?"  But as it went on, it really grew on me. When the 90 minutes was up, I found myself really enjoying what I saw. Didn't even fast forward through any of it. Harry Tchinski wrote, directed, and did the special effects like some sort of one man army. :::grin::: 

If you are able to not be a snob about a films budget and see the efforts people put into a film, I'm sure you'll enjoy BLOOD DEMON RISING as much as I did. Well worth a viddy!

HA! Spaceship Terror is Harry Tchinski first film from 2011 :) 

Artist Spotlight: Uno Moralez

Agent Tony passed this gent over to me recently and I LOVE his work.

Uno Moralez was born in Bashkortostan; a republic in the Russian Federation. His work as this crazy, creepy quality that I adore. The distinctive look and feel reminds me a bit of David Lynch's work, but the style is utterly unique.

You can see more of his amazing work on his site:
https://unomoralez.com/

There's also a fantastic interview with his here:
http://www.tcj.com/uno-moralez/



Enjoy!

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Suite 313

Easy does it. Eeeeeeasy. This is not a "great" film. This film isn't going to be on many "BEST OF" lists. However...it's totally entertaining and with a 63 minute runtime...it's well worth checking out.

Basically what we have here is a first person shooter horror game brought to life. And, they actually do a pretty good job of it.

An officer is called out to answer a 911 type call. When he arrives on the scene, he can tell that things are far from ok. There are several grisly scenes laid out before him and as he tries to piece things together, he gets a call from the original 911 caller telling him that he's in danger and that he needs to listen to what she has to say very carefully.

The female caller guides him along as things become more and more grim. But...what is the true nature of Suite 313?

 The film has all the video game tropes. First person perspective. Traps. Monsters. Jump scares. I found myself giggling from time to time because it actually kinda reminded me of the old SEGA games they were knocking out with video clips playing as you played along. Like the one I loved and made it through called SEWER SHARK. Just...without the horrid compression artifacts. :::grin::::



The filmmakers also manage to avoid the horrid camera vortex found in many found footage style films. The camera sweeping around in an awful way making the viewer ill. The cam is rather steady throughout Suite 313 and I REALLY appreciated it.





The effects are rather well done overall. While the budget is rather low, the effects play out in some gory and ghastly ways.






I hope that writer/director Aaron Pederis continues making films. Maybe one with a more standard narrative the next round. I dig his style and he seems to have a real grasp on the genre.


Give it a go! Free with AMAZON PRIME as of the time of this posting.

Marilyn Manson - Tattooed In Reverse (Music Video)

More Marilyn Manson goodness here with Tattooed In Reverse. A nice find passed along from Agent Krista B.


Some cool, freaky visuals that we here at the HORROR SHOW just love. This time, Mr. MM picked Courtney Love to be his guest star and she tears it up as a wicked nurse in the video. Nice to see that they decided to kiss...or kill...and make up. :) It would have been nice to see her a bit more, like Mr Depp in pervious videos. But, beggars can't be choosers. heh

NSFW!  Well, depending on where you work.

Who is this beauty? None of the articles seem to say - overshadowed by C. Love, sadly

"Twins of Evil - The Second Coming" tour dates:

Jul. 11 - Detroit, MI @ DTE Energy Music Center 
Jul. 14 - St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheater 
Jul. 15 - Chicago, IL @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheater 
Jul. 17 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
Jul. 18 - Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Home Mortgage Center 
Jul. 20 - Virginia Beach, VA @ Veteran’s United 
Jul. 21 - Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live 
Jul. 24 - Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Pavilion 
Jul. 25 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Keybank Pavilion 
Jul. 26 - Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage 
Jul. 29 - Bangor, ME @ Waterfront Darling's Pavilion 
Aug. 07 - Wantagh, NY @ Jones Beach 
Aug. 08 - Mansfield, MA @ Xfinity Center 
Aug. 09 - Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion 
Aug. 11 - Hartford, CT @ The Xfinity Theatre 
Aug. 12 - Darien lake, NY @ Darien Lake Amphitheater 
Aug. 14 - Atlanta, GA @ Cellairis Amp at Lakewood 
Aug. 16 - Dallas, TX @ Starplex Pavilion
Aug. 17 - Austin, TX @ Austin 360 
Aug. 18 - Woodlands, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion 
Aug. 20 - Denver, CO @ Pepsi Center 
Aug. 22 - Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheater 
Aug. 24 - Chula Vista, CA @ Mattress Firm Amphitheater
Aug. 25 - Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena 
Aug. 26 - Phoenix, AZ @ AK Chin Pavilion 
Aug. 28 - Concord, CA @ Concord Pavilion
Aug. 29 - Irvine, CA @ Fivepoint Amphitheater 

Tormented

I just watched Jon Wright's Tormented - the film he made before Grabbers. I'm not sure if I liked it, but I didn't hate it. It was strange.

Like Grabbers, there is some comedy involved here, but it's not as obvious as in his follow up. There's an awkwardness and clumsy quality to the whole of it that makes it uncomfortable to watch at times. The camera work is overly kinetic, the pace is odd and the story seems like it could be far stronger if the running time was shaved by 20 or 30 minutes.  


HOWEVER, this is not a "bag on it" review.  I still enjoyed the film. The point here is that Grabbers does many things better than Tormented which is a good thing. I was actually happy that I viewed the films in this order. It shows a progression forward that got me excited about seeing future works by Mr. Wright.

Tormented is somewhat basic. It opens on a school memorial service for a boy that killed himself. The boy's one friend calls out that various people in the school tormented (Heh? Heh?! ok...he didn't come out and SAY tormented...) the boy and that they were all hypocrites for being at the memorial. Long and short, there was a "Beautiful People" group that teased and harassed the boy to death. One boy one, said group gets nasty comments texted to them via the dead boy's cell phone. Death and violence ensues with - spoiler - graphic violence and some supernatural turns.

Tormented has another level to it as well. While the device of bullies and vengeance is really nothing new, there's a grand show made of the other end of the spectrum that is overlooked from time to time. Those folks that may not bully directly, but may not jump in to help the victim either. I liked this aspect of the film. Sadly, I've been that person before with disastrous results. (The girl I didn't stand up for in 3rd grade turned out to be a model later in life. She had the pleasure of smirking at me and slowly shaking her head no when I said we should hang out sometime.)  :)

While the main plot is very well known, there are a few fun twists and takes on this familiar, genre classic that I enjoyed. Again, while I wasn't thrilled overall, I wasn't sad about the time I spent watching, either.  All in all, it's worth a viewing. 

Jon Wright's OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS (currently set for a 2014 release) will be the tie breaker. Will it be even better than Grabbers or will it drop back to Tormented levels? I'm hoping the upward and onward progression continues.



TORMENTED can be found on YouTube at the moment.  

Devil

Well, color me surprised. I liked DEVIL. It's not without it's faults, but they are outweighed by what the film has to offer.

The plot is super simple. There is a group of people trapped in an elevator. No one can get it working again despite the efforts of the security staff and maintenance people. The lights flicker...dim...and go dark. And that's when the incidents start to occur. Will the detective on the scene be able to calm them down enough so they won't hurt each other so he has time to sort out what's going on? And, will that one security guy STOP going on about...the Devil?





This is a classic "lifeboat" situation with a twist. We're not just dealing with trapped people on edge here. It's a pressure cooker with a supernatural bent. A great "Who dunnit?" plot line with some great reveals and fun edit work. There's a flickering light element that is a lot of fun. It was a fun gag that had me giggling at one point.

The detective work within the film works, too. There's nothing flying in from left field. Everything seems to work and flow naturally. And the way the story unfolds really had me engaged.

Now, the film isn't without it's "faults". The screenplay was based on an M. Night Shyamalan story, so it has some heavy handed themes about good and evil. But, that aside, the story is also a lot of fun and packed with great, rolling set pieces that lead the viewer along nicely.

John Erick Dowdle's direction is pretty dern good as well. Looking back on his other efforts, he does have some shining moments in the darkness. 2007's The Poughkeepsie Tapes was all the rage. In 2008, he was handed Quarantine. While the film SHOULD have worked due to the success of the original...released in the same year...it didn't have the same success as the amazing Spanish original. Two years later, Devil came and received ok reviews, but I think people were not ready to see this claustrophobic horror mystery unfold - a tale told in one space, basically.



Much of what works here is Brian Nelson's script. It's a lot of fun and moves quickly. Seeing as he was involved in HARD CANDY and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT - two more films that take place in basically the same area in a closed in way, it's not surprising that this film worked so well. 

I had this in my list on NETFLIX for a while and hovered over it several times. But...to be honest...M. Night being involved made me shy away. It's sad, but true. I was so into him when he first showed up on the scene and now I see his name on something and shy away. Personally, DEVIL has me back in the M. Night camp.


If you're in the mood for a good story, interesting situations and some fun acting, give DEVIL a go.

Do you like horror movies?

"Do you like 

                            horror movies too?"

The Beyond

Lucio Fulci.

Fulci is one of my favorites for sure. His films are cinematic nightmares that unfold like fever dreams. THE BEYOND is one of the strange ones for sure. So many strange goings on.

A women inherits a hotel in Louisiana and tries to fix it up so that she can get back on her feet financially. A strange crew of characters come with the house  - old workers that come with the inheritance in a way. Everything is going fine...until a series of accidents starts taking people out one by one. Oh, and there is also the evil spirit buried in the hotel walls. That always puts a damper on schedules when you're trying to open a hotel . heh

Fulci loves his body horrors and this film has many of them. There are spider attacks, acid deaths, dog attacks, zombie attacks and the must have Fulci eye injuries as well. It's classic, gore filled, Italian horror, but there is something else to it as well. The Beyond is a story of hell and opening a gate to it. Once you see into it, you are cursed. It's a dark tale for sure and it's filled with iconic horror scenes with blind spirits, zombies and gore spraying EVERYWHERE. This should be on every horror lover's view list.

And that nightmare quality shines through in The Beyond. There are things that happen that really do seem like they are right out of a nightmare. Things in the dark that are reaching for you and clawing at you. The stuff that keeps people up at night. Fulci is a master of bringing every bit of that dread and fear to the screen. It's nasty stuff. I love it. :) However, it lacks the same edge as some of Argento's work.  It just doesn't seem as mean and targeted. I'm not sure why. It just seems like bad things are happening to anyone and everyone around the scene - male or female or child or animal. It's just going to get you and it doesn't care who you are, where as Argento films seem to target females far more than males.

The Beyond part of a trilogy of terror that Fulci has going on as pointed out by the HYPNOBOBS podcast ZOMBI ZOMBI PART III. (It's a must hear for zombie lovers) The trilogy of hell consists of City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981) and The House By The Cemetery (1981) and after listening to the podcast, I have to agree with the synopsis.t would make a fantastic triple bill!