Category: Halloween

So, I finished Ghost House, after not being up for it before. It had something of a swerve in the middle, where they are about to pass on the curse but decide not to. And of course a stinger at the end, where we can see that the cycle will continue. I’d give it a solid meh, it was alright, but nothing special. 

Today’s Movie: The Purge: Election Year

Well, that was better than I expected. But I don’t think it was a horror movie. I think it was a thriller, or a action movie maybe. Maybe I should rewatch previous Purges. There is definitely some genre drift. If I recall correctly, the first one with the house invasion, that one was more of a horror movie. I’d have to pull up wiki summaries for the other ones, as I can’t specifically recall.

The purge as a concept is still horribly flawed, but as the series has gone on, they’ve plugged up some of the more obvious holes, and focused on the people who want something other than the chaos that the purge creates. And they added some nice touches with the economic reality of the Purge. One of the main characters this time around is just trying to protect his Deli, his livelihood, after the insurance company jacks up his premiums by thousands on the day before the purge.

Only one film tonight. Another haunted house film. This one, The Funhouse Massacre, was about a cult leader who was being held in the mental health equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.

No rights, no trials, no sentences, just lock up the monsters and leave them to rot. And this place had a nice collection of monsters. A dentist, a taxidermist, a clown themed wrestler, a cannibal chef, a nice ensemble cast. So cult leader dude, and his serial killer daughter orchestrate a fun house themed after all the various crimes, the perfect place for these guys to throw down after their escape.

Then you throw in a quirky collection of folks from the local dinner, a tough cop, a clueless cop, and some radio DJs, and you’ve got this gory funny halloween mess.

Of the stuff I’ve watched recently, this is the first one I’d recommend to people. 

HellHouse LLC and HellHouse LLC II : Abbadon House. 

So, these were a pair of found footage films about a haunted house, where dark rituals had been performed and a tragedy occurred. The news segments were pretty well done and felt like local news. The in-house stuff relied too much on the darkness and the cameras not being able to capture much.  The supernatural elements also interfered with radios and cameras, meaning the cameras would start to fail when things got spooky. Sometimes this can work, sometimes this comes across as annoying; in this case, it comes across as both at different times. 

I also attempted to watch Ghost House, a film about an american couple on vacation in Thailand, the american woman disturbs a “ghost house”, which wikipedia lists under the heading “spirit houses“. Disrupt the shrine, bad things happen, pretty plotline when foreigners adversely interact with folklore. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll give it another shot another time.

A few years back, I tried to keep a log of my 31 days of horror movies. As I recall, it didn’t go overly well. I logged a dozen or so movies over a few days, then got distracted by something. 

In an effort to bring this place back from the dead, now that I’ve made the effort to move it to a new host, I’ll attempt something similar. I’ve just resubscribed to Shudder, between that, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, I should have a decent catalog to work with.