One of my favorite zombie films of the last decade. Reminded me of Dawn of the Dead in how it delves into the day-to-day meticulous process of clearing and maintaining his apartment building; the psychological focus and the solo cast does a lot to make zombie apocalypse scary and tense again
30. The Night Eats The World (2018)
A depressing journey of one man's descent into madness during the zombie apocalypse. Focuses more on our survivor's mental health than it does on zombies. Not the most exciting movie but it was definitely well shot and exceeded what it set out to do.
The answer is the studio mandated a more action heavy climax with an exorcism present, later in production. Originally it was more low key like the rest of the film.31 Days of Horror 2020: #21/31
The Exorcist III (1990) - ★★★★
I've heard a lot of good things about The Exorcist 3, but I never realized that it was a supernatural detective thriller, like a proto-Seven plagued by an evil even creepier and darker than the earthly John Doe. George C Scott is incredibly compelling as Lieutenant Kinderman, a man of shaken faith and keen deduction. The entire film seems grounded in his secular shrewdness. William Peter Batty directs this with a workmanlike simplicity that could be seen as inexperience, yet coalesces well with Exorcist 3's stage-like focus on intense dialogues.
For about 75% of its runtime, this sequel is a riveting tale of a good man struggling to comprehend evil. Of a genuinely endearing odd-couple friendship between Scott's lieutenant and Ed Flanders' Father Dyer. Of disturbing fates left mostly unseen, but made chilling through their cold-sweat impact on Kinderman's stony resolve. The bleak horrors of the film linger upon characters' faces and in their silences, a palpable disgust smothering the aftermath of each grisly murder.
When Brad Dourif enters the film as the Gemini Killer, 3's play-esque approach reaches its zenith. The scenes between Scott and Dourif are almost entirely closeups and static shots of the two face-to-face in that light-streaked cell. Yet their confrontations are mesmerizingly intense; it's a career-best showcase for Dourif, his every word cutting like slow razors.
But...
But then the final act happens. Suddenly this deliberately-paced coldly-unsettling thriller becomes an Italian horror flick, awash in showy effects, whiplash editing, gross gore, and fantastical hallucinatory imagery. Who let this tertiary priest character in to perform an exorcism? Why does the movie treat this confrontation like a moment of huge pay-off? Suddenly Kinderman's family matters when we barely know them? What happened? Did the studio fire the director? I'm still reeling from the gargantuan tonal shift. Still deciding on whether I appreciate such an audacious tonal shift and gonzo visuals or hate how bizarrely out-of-place that finale feels.
I was enthralled for most of The Exorcist 3 and in shock for the rest. Definitely need to seek out that Legion director's cut.
Is this a different movie than As Above So Below?
30. The Night Eats The World (2018)
A depressing journey of one man's descent into madness during the zombie apocalypse. Focuses more on our survivor's mental health than it does on zombies. Not the most exciting movie but it was definitely well shot and exceeded what it set out to do.
31. The Mortuary Collection (2019)
This was a lot of fun and easily one of the better anthologies. The stories all flowed well and some were clearly stronger than others but the production design and special effects were great.
31 Days of Horror 2020: #21/31
The Exorcist III (1990) - ★★★★
I've heard a lot of good things about The Exorcist 3, but I never realized that it was a supernatural detective thriller, like a proto-Seven plagued by an evil even creepier and darker than the earthly John Doe. George C Scott is incredibly compelling as Lieutenant Kinderman, a man of shaken faith and keen deduction. The entire film seems grounded in his secular shrewdness. William Peter Batty directs this with a workmanlike simplicity that could be seen as inexperience, yet coalesces well with Exorcist 3's stage-like focus on intense dialogues.
For about 75% of its runtime, this sequel is a riveting tale of a good man struggling to comprehend evil. Of a genuinely endearing odd-couple friendship between Scott's lieutenant and Ed Flanders' Father Dyer. Of disturbing fates left mostly unseen, but made chilling through their cold-sweat impact on Kinderman's stony resolve. The bleak horrors of the film linger upon characters' faces and in their silences, a palpable disgust smothering the aftermath of each grisly murder.
When Brad Dourif enters the film as the Gemini Killer, 3's play-esque approach reaches its zenith. The scenes between Scott and Dourif are almost entirely closeups and static shots of the two face-to-face in that light-streaked cell. Yet their confrontations are mesmerizingly intense; it's a career-best showcase for Dourif, his every word cutting like slow razors.
But...
But then the final act happens. Suddenly this deliberately-paced coldly-unsettling thriller becomes an Italian horror flick, awash in showy effects, whiplash editing, gross gore, and fantastical hallucinatory imagery. Who let this tertiary priest character in to perform an exorcism? Why does the movie treat this confrontation like a moment of huge pay-off? Suddenly Kinderman's family matters when we barely know them? What happened? Did the studio fire the director? I'm still reeling from the gargantuan tonal shift. Still deciding on whether I appreciate such an audacious tonal shift and gonzo visuals or hate how bizarrely out-of-place that finale feels.
I was enthralled for most of The Exorcist 3 and in shock for the rest. Definitely need to seek out that Legion director's cut.
Yeah, that's the impression I've gotten from reviews. The Legion cut doesn't seem to be available to rent or stream anywhere though
I think it's only available on shouts bluray since they put it together. It's a great release.
He's doing a Viking revenge epic next#18 - The Lighthouse
Huh. Wasn't expecting so much farting.
The Lighthouse is a wonderful nightmare of a film. Some lovely cinematography, expected no less from the man behind The Witch. Great atmosphere, imagery and audio direction. I dig the retro aesthetic. Surprisingly humorous at times, the characters quibbling about farts and lobsters and stuff got some laughs out of me. Pattinson and Dafoe are great, compelling in their descent into madness. Looking forward to whatever Eggers comes up with next.
I hope you saw the director's cut. That's the only one I saw, on advice of others, later I found out the theatrical version literally tells you the entire mystery plot in the first thirty seconds.
Yup, it was the director's cut. Glad I picked the right one cause that would have been a bummer.
Cool! Thanks for checking it out. Just finished week 2 of my new film SUPERHOST. One week left.
I finally got around to seeing this and thought it was all around much better than oatmeal's previous film Still/Born. The first half was pretty standard and the second half took me to places I didn't expect, which is what you want from a horror flick.
Anxiously await oatmeal's next.
Whew on that staircase scene!
Week Four (Oct 18-24): Blood Runs Thicker than Water... (Oct 18)
First, you thought your parents were just crazy, but now, they're a part of The Crazies! The high concept here is the kind of thing that would ordinarily get tossed out by any self-respecting film studio exec, knowing full well the kind of heat they would get for bankrolling a film in which parents are compelled to murder the hell out of their kids. That is why such an audacious concept seems well suited for the talents of at least one member of the cult favorite Neveldine/Taylor duo, the latter of which who happens to be responsible for this, as they knew a thing or two about releasing right under everyone's noses some really out-there stuff that so happens to feature big stars in what appears on the surface something more conventional. Certainly, Crank lived up to its fever dream reputation, taking what could have been an otherwise mundane spin on DOA starring Jason Statham and turning it into a coked-out bender of movie, all too happy to breath its sickness all over you as the odyssey of the impossibly-named Chev Chelios spending his final day on earth defying death in increasingly outrageous ways. They even managed to get their hands on a Marvel property in Ghost Rider, albeit before the days of the MCU being crystallized, managing to work all kinds of ideas stupid enough to just work to suit the talents of Nicolas Cage far better than its boring predecessor did. Did they make good movies? That is of course in the eye of the beholder, but they sure did make distinct ones all the same.
Even without his partner in crime, Brian Taylor is still very much keyed into that whole aesthetic on this production, reuniting him with Cage as one of his lead actors as well, and it's hard to mistake this for any other filmmaker. With the whirlwind handheld camerawork that almost assuredly had Taylor behind it, as he had done before on his previous films, the frenetic editing that makes one wonder if it was cut by someone really stupid or someone really clever, or perhaps a bit of both, and the always silly yet occasionally effective needle drops for the licensed songs that play in the more outrageous scenes, you know full well what you're getting into here and know that there will be some way that the work here will find a way to make your eyeballs bulge out in complete disbelief at some point. And sure enough, the concept here is ripe with potential on that front, with some demented highlights including a initial attack wave on a high school track that has us following around with parents lunging and attacking at their children while security tries to break it up, as well as an eyebrow-raising scene that takes place in a hospital as a new mother eyes her newborn with something that sure isn't an outpouring of love. The film is smart enough to realize that such an otherwise odious concept for a film needs to be played to the absolute hilt in order to make any of it work, and on that front, it succeeds in being the kind of darkly humorous adrenaline shot for its duration.
Strangely, I did find myself wanting something more ridiculous than what we wound up getting here. Although it runs the risk of me advocating for more wanton child slaughtering, there's a sense throughout that Taylor is pulling his punches, as this never quite hits the mark in terms of depiction throughout that you would have expected with his past credits for the maximum level of lurid lunacy that it seems keyed into delivering. It's not as if the film is particularly interested in good taste to begin with, so it suffers in relation to the mode that it's in that it doesn't really have the meat, figuratively speaking, that it seemed primed for from the jump. In its place is an abundance of ironic cutaways that drop in between the action beats, which show off the history of the Ryan clan before the event in the hopes of adding some story, but they wind up so frequent and obvious in when they're going to be placed that you can set your watch to when they'll arrive on the scene, giving an air of predictability that is quite unbecoming of the filmmaker, as if he was running out of tricks.
The ingredients are all there: a disturbing concept that gets played the way it needs to in order to work at all, game performances from both Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair, both of whom clearly relish the wacko interplay they have with each other, and just enough fun surprises throughout to keep you guessing at what will happen next, including a cameo from a veteran character actor that kills just as much as his character wants to kill his son. Yet the broth here feels a bit flavorless in the end, not helped by a bizarre non-ending that feels less like the mic drop that Taylor intended it to be and more like they ran out of money, that makes all the surface here feel just like that. One cutaway hints at the potential that Taylor had with the concept, slowing things down enough for the parents to go through their own mini-midlife crisis that makes one of their plights instantly relatable while not forgoing some of the over-the-top elements that went into its unlikely catharsis, but soon after, it's right back to stepping on the gas like the rest of the film had been going with before. It's a film that certainly gets to what it's all about with no excuses for itself, and that may just be the problem I have with it: try as Taylor did with some of the more inspired moments, he didn't have the foresight to push things just a little harder and wilder to make something that folks really would talk about, and the result is making something that can't help but feel disappointing in its ability to ultimately play out the way that you would have expected it to with the names in front of and behind the camera. It's hard not to have fun with this, but you might find yourself wondering why it isn't more fun.
25/38
