Tag: halloween

I Scream Some Day: Day 1, Scream

On By troubledproductionsIn I Scream Some DaysLeave a comment

So it’s slowly approaching that time of year. The awful horrible time full of fear and decadence; Christmas. But before that, we have to get Halloween out the way. Continuing our tradition that started two years ago with A Nightmare On Elm Street, then repeated last year with Child’s Play, I’ll be watching a horror movie series every day until Halloween and live-blogging my thoughts, some nonsensical, some serious, but mostly kinda weird. I struggled with what to pick at first, I was going to do Saw but then realised since there’s a new one out at the cinema now the blogs will immediately become outdated unless I live blog at the cinema, like an asshole. So, which HALLOWEEN film will I be blogging about in the lead up to HALLOWEEN? Yes, that’s right, Scream! Yup, we’re craving Craven. I kind of dig this film, was originally going to be called Scary Movie, hence the phrase “Scary movie” being used a lot.

Budget: $14million

Box Office: $173million.

  • A guy phones someone and is annoyed she wants to not talk to a stranger, he ends up brutally killing her, somewhere on the internet there are people defending him and blaming feminism.
  • “Halloween, you know the one where the guy wears a white mask and stalks babysitters?” Spoilers!
  • What would have happened if she never answered the phone? That’s why I think I’d survive in this universe, I let unknown numbers go to voicemail or just reject them. “Hi, is this Lee? Yeah, I planned to torment you over the phone and then kill you brutally, let me know when you get this. It’s Pete, my address is….”
  • Drew Barrymore runs around locking all the doors. Which means they were all unlocked, she deserves what happens.
  • “I’m going to phone the police” “they’d never get there in time”, so she just doesn’t try. Lazy! Although they actually forgot to unplug the phone for this scene, so she actually did phone the police and cry down the line to them.
  • “I want to see what your insides look like”, there are magazines for that kind of thing, and videos online.
  • “his name wouldn’t be Steve would it? “how do you know his name”, he’s a white American football player at high school, odds are he was going to be called either Steve or Chad, so he had a 50% chance of being right.
  • “I want to play a game”, and thus Ghostface invents Saw about 10 years before Saw was ever Saw.
  • “Mrs Vorhees was the killer in the first one, Jason didn’t appear until the sequel” And I don’t think he got his mask until the third one, it’s weird how long that series took to set up its iconography, people love Jason and the mask, yet the best-regarded film in the series is the one which has none of those things.
  • “There are two doors to this house”, really? She locked like 5 of them earlier.
  • She stops running when she sees a car in the distance, as opposed to running towards it, all so the killer can jump her.
  • The scene where she is first stabbed was going to be cut by MPAA for being too graphic, it was allowed to stay because the director told them that was the only cut they had of that. They lied.
  • Drew Barrymore sees her parents yet is too feeble to properly scream for them so they walk straight past her. That’s one hell of a good scene.
  • Her mum seems traumatised by the possibility of something happening to her daughter, I want a horror movie to focus more on that. How does a community react to a large group of teenagers die? Do they get resentful to the ones left behind? Do they even stay there or do they all move?
  • She got hung from tree really quickly. Killers may be sociopaths, but they’re efficient.
  • If this film was made today, this is where the opening credits would be, as it is the opening credits are at the opening for some reason.
  • “kids are doing drugs here, and some are involved in the occult”, I thought that was supposed to be good for you? Aid digestion etc.
  • Oh wait, that’s Yakult. Never mind.
  • There’s a lot of people wearing really ugly jumpers in this film. Is that what the kids are wearing these days? Ugly sweaters? If that’s the case then hey, I’m fashionable.
  • Why exactly are they interviewing everybody at the school? Just because they went to school doesn’t mean everyone at school is a suspect, by that logic you might as well ask everybody on the street, or if they worked everybody there. It’s just because the other main characters are at school, isn’t it?
  • “officers are baffled by the lack of clues”, really? Did they not think to check phone records?
  • Students sit around making jokes about the murdered students, I like to think I wouldn’t be that awful, then I remembered who I am.
  • “the question isn’t Who Am I, it’s Where Am I?”, no, that’s a completely different question.
  • “I’m at your front porch” so she walks towards the porch and opens the door just to prove he’s lying, as opposed to, you know, just calling him a prick and hanging up the phone.
  • Sidney tries to prove she can’t be seen by picking her nose, ewwwww.
  • Ghostface tries to kill her but gets defeated and is unable to. Let’s talk about this for a moment, it turns out the killers are going to cover up their murders by saying Sidney’s dad was driven insane and killed Sidney and himself to cover it up. Then why did they kill everybody else? Surely Sidney’s dad would have had an alibi for the first murder?
  • Killer left costume behind, the police don’t use this to check anything like hair etc to try and establish identity. Although the police can’t anyway because they handle it without gloves because they’re idiots.
  • The character of Dewey was originally supposed to be the classic good looking and athletic cop. Once they cast David Arquette they rewrote him as more of a bumbling idiot, that’s gotta be disheartening for him to hear. It’s like how Jack Davenport was told he was too good looking to play the lead in Hitchhikers Guide, I wonder how Martin Freeman felt about that.
  • “looks like you fingered the wrong guy, again” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve also done that.
  • It’s at least four.
  • “don’t worry, it’s school you’ll be safe here”. He has no idea school is like does he?
  • “what was it like to almost be killed?” Considering that interviewer is Linda Blair from The Exorcist, you think she’d know.
  • “Cotton’s in jail, they’re going to gas him”, ah, the old “dutch oven” method of execution.
  • Newsreader has an “OMG this person on death row might be innocent, I could save him” epiphany. Surely she already thought that considering she wrote a book saying he was innocent and shouldn’t be on death row?
  • “understand what? That I have a girlfriend who would rather think I’m a psychopathic killer than touch me?” Most people I’ve dated have been the same, although to be fair, I am a psychopathic killer, but they didn’t know that.
  • “I was attacked and nearly filleted last night”, but you don’t have a penis.
  • oh, filleted, not fellated, my bad. Easy mistake.
  • Fun fact, the cloak the killer wears was going to be white but was changed because it looked too much like KKK robes. I suppose even killers don’t want to be associated with those racist dickbags.
  • Fuck nazi’s. I can’t believe we’re at a point in history where that’s a somewhat controversial opinion yet it seems like it is. People got annoyed at the new Wolfenstein game because you could kill nazi’s in it as if that wasn’t the entire point of the games to begin with.
  • On that note, students get caught running through the halls whilst dressed a serial killer that’s on the lose, they object to being in trouble saying it was just a joke. At the time this made them seem like heartless assholes, now they just seem like ordinary twitter people, albeit ones who Donald Trump and Daily Heil will insult for being SJW’s.
  • Sidney walks into a toilet stall then 5 seconds later a conversation continues that was obviously happening before she was there, that delay is weird.
  • “homicide is a much healthier, therapeutic expression”, that’s what I’ve been telling people.
  • Why was the killer in the toilets? What was his plan? How did he know she’d need toilets, more specifically, those toilets? How did he even know it was her?
  • “you can literally feel the fear on this campus”, that would only be LITERALLY true if you were walking around wading through people’s fear-piss.
  • “now that her boyfriend tried to mutilate her, think she’ll go out with me?”. Oh he’s one of “those” guys isn’t he?
  • “It’s the Millenium, motives are incidental”, no it’s not, it’s 1996. I don’t say that 2017 is the same as the year in three years time, that’s why I have no idea what’s going to happen in three years time, I don’t have 2020 vision.
  • Nick Cave Red Right Hand. Nothing interesting to say here, just really love this song.
  • “If they make a movie about you who’d play you?” Is that a normal question to ask someone during a killing spree?
  • Joseph Whipp as the sheriff there, he obviously did such a great job as a police officer on Elm Street he got promoted.
  • Ben Affleck and Jason Lee were both considered for this film, all that’s needed is Jason Mewes and it would be a Kevin Smith movie.
  • Jamie Lee Curtis described as “The Scream Queen” there. About 20 years before she’d play a lead character in Scream Queens (which you should all watch, by the way, is superb)
  • “is that you Randy?” She then proceeds to have a slightly flirtatious dialogue with who she thinks is Randy after he’s been creepy. This is the second time in the film that’s happened, weird thing for him to be known for.
  • Shouldn’t the garage door have a safety feature to stop shit like this happening? Side note, how did nobody find her body throughout the rest of the party if that’s the only place there was beer? Was everybody tee-total for the rest of the night? Or did they see her body and think “oh, classic forgettable blonde character, she does this every time she gets drunk”. All jokes aside….then I’d have nothing to say, this death is fucking stupid.
  • Randy watches Sidney and Billy go up to a bedroom then says “I’m going to go check on him” like that’s not a creepy thing to do.
  • “this isn’t a movie”, wooo, if an actual screenwriter can use that line, then it’s perfectly okay that I did.
  • “why can’t I live in a Meg Ryan movie, or a really good porno” If I did this last year I’d have said it’s terrible that those two thoughts follow each other, since then I’ve had someone say “we’re releasing doves to commemorate my fiance’s death, me and you should have sex in those bushes”, so instead I’m going to hate the fact that this film reminded me of that. Also, don’t a lot of people still die in Meg Ryan movies? Just of slow depressing diseases? How is that better?
  • “I want to see Jamie Lee’s breasts, when do we get to see them?”, so this is what people did before the internet.
  • Watching Halloween and someone criticises it by saying “The blood is all wrong”, in a scene which contains no blood.
  • “what do I have to do to prove to you I’m not a killer?” Is that a normal question to ask in a relationship?
  • “oh my god”, a simple “look out” or “killer behind you” would have been more useful. But no, stay quiet whilst a knife-wielding maniac approaches your boyfriend from behind (not like that)
  • We later find out this death was faked and that’s fake blood on Billy’s chest. One question; how? Like how did they get him covered in fake blood that quickly? It wasn’t a blood pack taped to his shirt/skin as he’d just had sex so Sidney would have noticed (trust me, girls notice if you have fake blood duct-taped to your chest, and it really kills the mood during sexytimes, almost as much as referring to it as sexytimes)
  • Those bedroom doors lock from the outside, is that normal? Or is that something which hostage-takers have to pay extra for?
  • “watch out Jamie, behind you,” says Jamie Kennedy as the killer is behind him. Lol.
  • Kenny the cameraman checks outside when he suspects the killers aren’t in the house. Kenny is an idiot.
  • Oh my god, they killed Kenny! You bastard.
  • Sidney gets attacked whilst sitting in the front seat of a police car, don’t they normally have mesh wire up to stop this exact thing from happening?
  • Stu and Randy both claim each other are the killer and Sidney shuts the door on both of them. That’s kind of dickish, as she basically condemned the other one to death.
  • Hang on, wait a minute, didn’t Sidney already see film footage of the killer standing behind Randy earlier? So she should know he’s not a killer.
  • What a surprise, the two creepy characters turn out to be the killers. Actually, that is quite a good twist, as one of them was so obviously evil that it seemed like misdirection, and the idea of having two killers was revolutionary at the time. Although how did Stu get in if the doors were locked?
  • Killers decide to monologue instead of killing the main character. Have they never seen a Bond movie?
  • Killers discuss a motive, saying Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates never had motives and we knew nothing about their past, ironically both have had prequels made about them, which renders that scene redundant.
  • They plan to frame Sidney’s dad and make it look like he killed everyone then shot himself, won’t the police be able to tell he didn’t shoot himself by the angle of the shot, fingerprints, and the fact his hands and legs are duct-taped together? And where did they pull him from? Has he been tied together in a cupboard all night? Whilst there was a party going on? So where he was somewhere no drunken teenagers would go during a house party to fuck, does such a room exist?
  • Billy and Stu stab themselves to make themselves look more like victims. 1) Actually a terrific scene, full of tension and drama. 2) Why didn’t they wait until everyone was dead before doing that?
  • Wild Gail Weathers appears, does nobody lock a door in this damn house? Do you want burglars? Because that’s how you get burglars.
  • Wild Gail Weathers used gun. But it’s not very effective.
  • Billy throws the phone and hits Stu in the head causing the response “you hit me with the phone you dick!”. Both of which were improvised, well one was, the “hitting another person with a phone” bit was just a fuck up.
  • Why did Sidney put on the Ghostface costume? A sense of drama? Odd fact, Skeet Ulrich had heart surgery when he was younger, so he now has metal wiring there which causes INTENSE pain when it’s touched. Another odd fact; when his character was stabbed with an umbrella the actor who did it couldn’t see properly, so hit him in the worst place possible, as such that scream you hear from him is genuine.
  • It’s now morning, and the ambulance is finally taking the stabbed people away. What took them so long? “there was a massive killing spree at a house last night, and we’ve got the guys who have been terrorising this town all week, should we go?” “I don’t know, I literally just sat down, I’ll just make a cup of tea, watch my shows, then we can go”
  • “like the plot of some scary movie. it all began with a scream”, hey that’s the title(s) of the movie!

So that’s that done. Pretty good film but not a good series starter, mainly because it doesn’t really set up the sequels that much so it seems like it was written as a standalone. On the plus side this means it doesn’t do any obvious sequel hooks which are annoying as fuck. It’s weird how much this changed horror movies. It was supposed to be the film that killed slashers as it made them look too silly, it just made them evolve, this was followed by lots of poor imitators and horror stayed self-aware and teenage until torture porn and found footage became popular. It’s odd as both of those seem to have died a few years ago with the decline in popularity of the Saw and Paranormal Activity franchises, yet they haven’t really been replaced yet by anything. There’s been a lot of attempts to kick-start a horror trend but none have really stuck, personally I think over the next few years horror is going to get a lot more political and heavy-handed in delivering messages. I don’t really care, as long as they make good films.

Contemplations On Chucky: Day 1 (Child’s Play)

On By troubledproductionsIn Contemplations On ChuckyLeave a comment

So, halloween is just around the corner, knife in hand, ready to jump out and disembowel people when they approach it (or alternatively, hand out sweets, depends how you celebrate it), so what better time than now to waste time watching horror films start a new blog series? Similar to Musings On Marvel which I did earlier this year, and extremely similar (I.E: Pretty much the same as) last years Nightmare A Day, I’ll be watching a film every day and blogging my thoughts. This year I’m doing the Chucky series, and I thought I’d start with the first film, because I’m not a complete idiot.

Director: Tom Holland ((Psycho II (unpopular opinion, I prefer it to the first one) Fright Night (including the sequel and remake))

Budget: $9million

Box Office: $44.2million

  • The cop just threw his jacket away. Littering!
  • Pretty impressive shot there. Cop attempted to shoot someone but they move out of the way and it shoots a car window instead, camera was behind the car window so it looked beautiful.
  • How different would this film have been if he put his soul into a ninja turtle toy, or a transformer?
  • Oh man I’d hate to be the shop worker who has to tidy this up in the morning.
  • “Oh god I’m dying”, really needed a better delivery of that line there. Sounds way too “ah well, shit happens”
  • “You did this” Murderer is annoyed that somebody killed him. Really the hypocrisy is worse than the murder.
  • Shop exploded. Obviously. Yet no fire alarms went off. See, that’s why you have health and safety laws.
  • “I saw this one” yeah, children famously hate repetition.
  • This toy company has it’s own cereal that’s basically diabetes in a box.
  • That giant doll costume is really really creepy.
  • Even without the soul of a psychopathic killer I still get the feeling these dolls would kill you. You specifically.
  • “so remember to tell your mum and dad you want a Good Guy”. I have two jokes for this. Delete which ever one you found less funny. 1) When I told my parents I wanted a good guy they were less than pleased. 2) No, you go get a job and buy your own dolls.
  • “and remember, you can buy all these good guy accessories too” Holy pressurised selling, Batman!
  • This kid is called Andy, I’m now saying this is a Toy Story prequel.
  • “How long have you been up?” “since forever” You lying little shit.
  • “it looks delicious” Liar!
  • “I have to give you your super duper birthday tummy gummy” That sounds strange.
  • A news report on Charles Lee Ray, do they often put news reports about serial killers on just after children’s TV shows this early in the morning?
  • You did not need to have a box that big just to put children’s clothes in. It’s just a waste of wrapping paper.
  • “there’s a guy in the alley selling the toy you want”. That statement asks more questions than it answers. 1) Why were you in the alley behind the store? This was before shops could hire snipers to shoot smokers so you could have gone out the front. 2) How did Chucky climb back into the box and close it, and clean up the blood? 3) It’s been a while since I’ve brought toys, but “stranger in an alley”? I really doubt they have a decent returns policy. “if you’re not satisfied, fucking die”
  • “Are you happy with your job here?” No manager would ever ask that question.
  • “A Good Guy, I knew it” What gave it away? The fact it was in a Good Guy box, or the fact that the box has a see-through front so you can tell what it is before you opened it?
  • The toy company has it’s own cake mix. Evil!
  • “Hey Chucky, you’re not watching me”. It’s because you’re boring, kid.
  • “Chucky wants to watch the nine O clock news” She doesn’t find it weird that a child asks to watch the news.
  • So, inside the doll is the soul of an an adult male, and he just got kissed by a child. This must be hell for him.
  • “What is wrong with me?” Off the top of my head, I’d say low self-esteem, a lack of maternal affection and a genetic predisposition for anxiety and depression.
  • How did she get hit so hard (with a toy hammer no less) that she stumbled about 6 feet back with enough force to fall through a window? Were the windows made of sugar glass?
  • If a body lands on your car, is that covered by insurance?
  • “I live there”, thankfully the police don’t ask for proof or clarification.
  • So the detective investigating this is the same one who shot Charles Lee Ray? Wow, well coinci-mental
  • “Why? What’s happened to Maggie?” Well the detective is from homicide, try and put 2 and 2 together.
  • “You got any idea what these are?” What, the footprints, I’d say they’re footprints.
  • “what would Andy be doing on the counter anyway?” There speaks somebody who obviously has never had children, those fuckers climb everything.
  • PJ Sneakers? What the fuck? No! That’s just ugly capitalism.
  • “I don’t know who did that, and I don’t care”, wait, you don’t care who killed them?
  • “I want time alone with my son” “okay, we’ll clear out”, is that how police investigations work? They stay there until they solve the case, or until somebody politely asks them to leave.
  • The main kid in this called Andy, and there’s a character called Sid, this is basically Toy Story.
  • “his real name is Charles Lee Ray”, why did he tell you that?
  • “it’s because of Aunt Maggie you’re behaving like this”, no it’s because you’re a failure and I hate you.
  • “Why don’t you sleep with me tonight?” Wait, but at the moment you suspect your kid is dangerous, so why would you want that? Why not do the opposite and sleep far away, locking the door.
  • “you sure you’re alright about last night?” He goes to school the next day? I know it’s just a family friend but surely he’d get a day off for that?
  • How did he get on a train without either 1) paying (you really think a six year old kid has that much spare change?). 2) Someone phoning the police.
  • Pretty good use of music here, they’re seemingly incorporating the basic noise from a train running on the tracks into the music. Simplistic but rather brilliant.
  • What was Chucky’s plan if Andy didn’t need a piss at this precise moment?
  • Andy urinated for over a minute, how much does this kid drink?
  • “random noise, I’ll fire towards it” Good plan.
  • Andy runs towards gunshots.
  • How did Andy find Chucky in the burning wreckage?
  • Why has she not thrown that box out? Or at the very least compacted it down for recycling. Earth-killers are the true evil.
  • Good Guy even make their own god-damn batteries?
  • “Talk or I’ll throw you in the fire”. Look, this will go one of two ways, either 1) You’re threatening a serial killer. Or 2) You’re going to burn your childs favourite toy because it wouldn’t talk to you.
  • “I brought it from a peddler behind my work, I’ll try there” Stupid idea.
  • “he’s a cop” How do you know that? All he’s done is knee a homeless rapist in the groin, that’s the least that anybody would do.
  • “It was struck by lightning the night that Charles Lee Ray died? “How do you know that?” Well I imagine a serial killer dying, and a big toy store blowing up would make the local news. And he’s a member of the police so I imagine he’s up to date with current events, even ones as small as the police shooting someone.
  • “I was the man who killed him” “why didn’t you tell me?” Is it a policy to tell civilians every single person you’ve killed? If so that’s going to make meeting new people a lot more difficult for me.
  • Chucky attempts to strangle him, instead of, you know, using the knife.
  • Chucky finally decides to use the knife.
  • Obvious Green Screen is obvious.
  • “this is his accomplice” then why aren’t you there? Why did you insist on seeing a civilian first, and then take her to a possibly dangerous scene?
  • Why does he have a voodoo doll of himself? Does he put it near the heater so that even when he’s walking around in the snow he’s warm? That’s what I would do.
  • “I have a date with a six year old boy”, Phrasing!
  • Chucky stabs the voodoo doll, instead of, you know, just stabbing the guy laying in front of him. Lazy.
  • The actor playing Andy seems to genuinely be in fear. No child actor is that good (apart from Ruby Barnhill and Madison Wolfe of course) that I’m not suspicious that that child is actually in fear of his life. In which case, meh, you gotta do what you gotta do.
  • Chucky bites a lot. If that’s his natural instinct he probably did it a lot whilst human too, so why did it take so long for the police to catch him? Or has him becoming a doll given him really weird fetishes?
  • Random fact: Whilst doing the voice-over work for when Chucky is thrown in the fire, Brad Dourif’s (the voice of Chucky) daughter crawled into the recording room. Nobody noticed until she started crying as a reaction to her dad screaming. I don’t have a joke to end this on, just found that interesting.
  • This woman who works in a department store is a better shot than most movie cops.
  • I like how this ends with a “phew we’re safe, but oh shit, everyone thinks we’re crazy”. Kind of a happy ending, but also a downer. It’s a happy downer, like a post-orgasm penis

And that’s that. The first of many (well, about 5) in a new series.

 

The 5 Most Annoying Trends In Horror Movies

On By troubledproductionsIn ListLeave a comment

Last week I went to see the forgettable The Forest when it occurred to me, there’s been no genre with as high a disappointment ratio as horror. In the last two years (or since I started getting a cineworld card), I’ve only seen two very good horror films: The Babadook and It Follows. It’s probably the only genre with more films I’ve disliked (Annabelle, The Gallows, Unfriended) than liked. I’ve figured out that I dislike most of the films for the same reasons, so I looked at those reasons and list them here.

1. Native Americans/Japan

So what’s the cause for this demon that’s haunting everybody? Well, you just need to go for either Native-American or Japanese. The Japanese one is simply the fear of the unknown, but it’s not really unknown anymore. This isn’t the 70’s anymore, we’re aware of Japan etc and we’re no longer ignorant of their culture. So it’s weird that we do seem that a lot of modern horror films just go “because Japan has ghosts” as an acceptable answer. But that’s nowhere near as one that’s almost become cliche: Native Americans. This is a lot simpler, it’s to make do for the guilt of the genocide that took place hundreds of years ago, so we imply that they were a noble people with power beyond our grasp,bestowing upon them a knowledge and power that makes us feel okay with almost wiping them out. There’s not many modern American horror things in real life, there’s not many countrywide urban legends and rituals, so using Native Americans or the culture of the Japanese is just lazy shorthand.

2. Soundtracks.

Quick, what do the following have in common: The Exorcist, Halloween, Psycho? Well, they’re all horrors which have stood the test of time. But try to remember something about this films, odds are you just had the soundtrack to one of them in your head. Which makes me feel sad that this sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, It Follows is the only horror with a really good original soundtrack I’ve seen in seemingly forever. Most films just go with filling their soundtrack with rock music so they can make more money from the soundtrack. The trouble with this is that familiarity makes you feel safe, so when you’re watching a film and you’re sitting there and you recognise the music then you automatically get taken out of the film, you’re no longer scared. It’s like my nan used to say: Its impossible to be scared whilst listening to Creed. The only exception is if the characters themselves are listening to music, then you’re allowed to have familiarity. But if you’re having a horror chase scene to a song by P.O.D, then I won’t be scared, I’ll be wondering why the hell you chose that song. Please note: I know that Tubular Bells is a Mike Oldfield song that does exist outside of The Exorcist, but there is a difference between the way that the film used that, and the way that modern films use music.

3. Lack Of Originality

Yes, I know there’s been a Point Break remake this year, and there will soon be a Ghostbusters one. But no film genre is as incestuous and mastubatory as horror. Look, I know why this happens. It can be hard to market horror, it can be difficult to make people feel scared in a 30 second advert. So it’s tempting to just do a familiar concept so that people think “oh, that’s another film about killer t-shirts strangling people, I love them!” and go to see it. Companies want to showcase the best moments in the trailers, this is why you get the best jokes from comedies in the trailer. But in horror that’s different, you can take the scariest scene from a film, but take it out of it’s context and it’s meaningless. The best adverts I’ve seen for horror over the last few years have been It Follows and The Gallows. Because they showed absolutely nothing. You left the trailer with more questions than when it started, you wanted to see it to find out what happened. In this sense, less is definitely more. Ok, The Gallows ended up being a dire pile of faecal matter, but the trailer was superb.

4. Final Jump Scare

I blame Paranormal Activity for this. That film (apparently) stayed relatively restrained throughout, but then ended with something jumping towards the camera, thereby making it a feature length version of one of those videos that asshole at work always shows you. The reasoning behind this was that it would mean the audience would leave the cinema still shaking, otherwise, you know, they might have forgotten it was a horror movie and think they just watched P.S I Love You (which is a film which inspires horror and despair, but for a different reason entirely). The trouble with these fourth wall breaking scares is they break the story. By this point the ghost or demon or cannibalistic giraffe has already been destroyed and everyone lives happily, but to then have the thing leap at the audience at the end just means the story isn’t over. And if there’s no sequel then the film is completely pointless as nothing changed, it’s just a story of a demon that kills then kills again. Now, this is different from a downer ending where you feel an unending sense of doom, as they’re usually set up well so you’re walking out scared of the world as opposed to just the tiny amount of fear that jump scares inspire.

Worst Offender: Unfriended

Not only was this pointless, but it ruined what would have been a fantastic ending that almost saved the film.

5. Jump Scares

If you’ve seen a horror film lately you know what this is, quiet quiet quiet, sudden loudness and something happens. This scares the audience. But it doesn’t, not really. It doesn’t fill you with terror and make you scared outside of the film. It won’t effect your life once you’ve left the cinema. Basically; they don’t last. You don’t walk around afterwards with that sense of genuine terror. Look, we get it, being genuinely scary is hard, but if you can’t do it, don’t bother attempting. I don’t want to be fine after your film, I want your film to fuck me up and leave me unable to sleep. And jump scares don’t do that. You can have a few of them, but they can’t be the entire modus operandi.

 

 

Guest Review by Conor Amos: Silent Hill 2

On By troubledproductionsIn Guest Post, Why we loveLeave a comment

For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by horror and all its isolating and macabre brilliance. Slasher flicks and psychological thrillers from the `70s and `80s were the earliest iterations of horror that I was subjected to. From Stanley Kubrick’s disorientating and beautifully crafted The Shining to John Carpenter’s dark, suspenseful Halloween. 

Halloween

Along came the Playstation: a beast of a console that would quickly revolutionise 3D gaming as we knew it. My only gaming experiences up ‘till that point were playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Mega Drive or Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

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Suffice to say, I was used to playing video games that were fairly innocuous collect-’em-ups with bright colours and somewhat childish imagery (I still love those games, so don’t misconstrue what I say) and so when my older brother eventually bought Resident Evil about three years after it was released, I was naturally as aroused as an eight year-old can possibly be at the prospect of playing a horror game.

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I don’t need to say much about Resident Evil, since you’ve doubtless played it already or at least caught glimpses of the clunky, polygonal exercise in macabre from behind a tightly gripped pillow. However, I will say that it opened up a whole new world of gaming for me. Its gritty visuals, haunting soundtrack and claustrophobic locales and camera angles shook me up something fierce; giving me nightmares for weeks afterwards, yet a thirst for more.

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Now that I’ve given you a somewhat verbose and unnecessarily lengthy introduction to my love for horror, I’ll get to the meat of this piece:Silent Hill.

Silent Hill was released in 1999 by Konami; the same year I had first ever played Resident Evil and this was what is considered by many a momentous occasion for survival horror gaming in general. Although Resident Evil and its sequels were chilling in their own way, they also became more Westernised and formulaic as far as horror and storytelling is concerned. Silent Hill was an entirely different game and Team Silent had the ball in their court (for want of a less flimsy sport analogy).

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At first glance, it’s ostensibly a story about a guy looking for his lost daughter in a town inhabited by supernatural ghoulies looking to nibble on his testicles, but it is so much more beneath the surface. The town of Silent Hill is essentially a playground for a cavalcade of intense psychological distress and torture for its unfortunate visitors. The idea that the town itself is the protagonist’s and indeed, player’s worst enemy, gripped me instantly.

silent hill town

Silent Hill’s story, upon further inspection seems to be more of a benchmark for Konami’s future investment in the series and is greatly dwarfed by its sequels. It features some interesting imagery, is absolutely terrifying and deals with some very adult themes, but falls flat in many areas – with the introduction of a Satanic cult and attempting to give some semblance of meaning to the town’s ambiguity. However, it did the job in suppressing my appetite for terror as a child and I hoped for more.

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Apparently she’s only 45….Silent Hill cult, not once.

Of course, there were more games, but I didn’t play Silent Hill 2 for many years after it came out. Regrettably, I must say, as it was the one game that changed my entire perspective on video games as a creative medium and their artistic merit within our culture. As a phenomenon perpetuated by a society obsessed with stimulation and expressing ideas, video games are the perfect medium for such, since they are interactive and invest the player’s time and emotions into the story, subtext and characters presented to us.

ARTAlso, I wasn’t intellectually mature enough to understand what the whole thing was about. What the symbolism truly represented and how the choices made by the developers were unanimously integral to creating a world and a story so tragic, so frightening and so human that even the most jaded of pricks would be moved by it.
The enemies in Silent Hill 2 were created with a thematic purpose; an underlying motive behind their behaviours and superficial characteristics. As humans, we fear greatly what is alien to us. Inadvertently: what is considered alien to us, in fact reflects our subconscious in subtle ways. Disfigurements and warped, exaggerated human forms are what Silent Hill 2’s creatures essentially are. They encapsulate an intrinsically human blend of the tangible and intangible, with microscopic attention to detail in its cerebral imagery.

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The creatures are psychological representations of protagonist James’ subconscious. From the faceless nurses with their tumescent breasts and exaggerated curvy forms that represent James’ sexual repression and how he would have viewed the nurses during his wife’s hospitalisation, to the well-known Pyramid Head creature that slightly resembles an executioner and how he sexually tortures other monsters when he’s not toying with James.

Despite the horrific nature of the town’s ‘inhabitants’, it is ultimately the town itself that feels like the real enemy. There is an overwhelming sense of isolation throughout and each disorienting locale feels like a cleverly-designed maze built by Silent Hill to tap into James’ repressed, damning psyche.

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James encounters four equally important characters on his journey. There’s Angela: an ostensibly young, socially awkward girl who always looks uncomfortable around James; Eddie: an overweight twenty-something with a lazy eye and repugnant characteristics (the first time you see him, he is vomiting violently into a toilet and rambling about how he shot a dog); Laura: a temperamental, bratty child that has no qualms about vilifying James and his actions, and finally: Maria.

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Maria is quite possibly the most important character in the game and certainly the most ambiguous. She resembles James’ late wife Mary, who has been dead for three years. He received a letter from Mary claiming that she’s waiting for him in their ‘special place’ in Silent Hill. His grief is what brings him to Silent Hill, despite the idea of receiving a letter from a dead person being totally preposterous (it’s crazy what love can do). Maria is the exact polygonal structure of Mary and is played by the same voice and motion-capture actress. She’s more sexually alluring and is often quite condescending to James, but can sometimes be sweet and in those moments resembles Mary even more. Her presence is the driving force of the plot and she practically strips James down to his core; revealing his idiosyncrasies, his motivations and the conflicting emotions that plague his mind (so elegantly portrayed by the game’s horrific imagery and symbolism).

No game is without a polished sound design and Silent Hill 2 is an example of perfection (no hyperbole here). Akira Yamaoka (the series’ ex-composer) understood the importance of melody, nuance and indeed, silence when painting a picture of horror. His blend of industrial percussion and reverb-drenched blues guitar is ingenious and evocative. From nothing but the echoes of footfall down a dark, narrow corridor in the apartments, to the swing drums and twangy guitar melody in the bowling alley – it all creates a feeling of disconnection between the reality of the town and what James is actually going through.

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The environments and the music evoke a sense of time and place: namely nineteen fifties America soaked in horrific dissonance antithetical to that supposed utopia. It was presumably a tranquil and beautiful town decades earlier and we get to taste that in the soundtrack and the simplistic, modest architecture that the town is rife with.

DEAD

Unfortunately, the series’ popularity unceremoniously dissolved with the split of Team Silent and given Konami’s bullshit business practices of late, the future looks grim for Silent Hill. However, Silent Hill 2 will go down in history as one of the greatest examples of horror storytelling in video games and entertainment in general. It is and always will be my go-to game for intense psychological terror and an immensely tragic love story.

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This is only scratching the surface of what Silent Hill 2 really means to people: it has a huge cult following and the fans can talk about the game for hours on end; weaving a web of archives and discussion forums that keep this ship afloat.

It’s an obsession, and one I can definitely identify with.

Written by Conor Amos
Pictures by Mark Tonkin

A Nightmare A Day: Day 1 (A Nightmare On Elm Street)

On By troubledproductionsIn A Nightmare A DayLeave a comment

So, halloween is approaching. The night of scares, the night of horror, the night of staying indoors with all the lights off and pretending you’re not in. To prepare for this we thought we’d do something special. On Halloween itself I’ll be posting a blog about my love for Eternal Darkness, and on Monday they’ll be a blog about Silent Hill. But we thought we’d go a bit further than that. So I’ve started “Nightmare A Day” Every day until halloween I’ll be watching a film from Nightmare On Elm Street series and basically writing up my thoughts as I watch them. If this goes well we’ll be doing this again for other releases. It just felt right to do it with this because the iconic images contained, and as a tribute to the recently departed Wes Craven. We start at the beginning (obviously), enjoy:

Nothing is as creepy as this though
Nothing is as creepy as this though

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  • Kind of masterful opening, you’d expect there to be a reveal of the gloves later on, but nope right there in the pre-credits sequence. Kind of cool. Add five awesome points. Although I have to deduct those points for the images being ridiculously small. I don’t know if it was a problem with the conversion to DVD or not (I doubt it, but let’s be kind), but it’s quite offputting, so it loses those points almost immediately.
  • “introducing Johnny Depp”. So you’re to blame for Mortdecai
  • And there’s a random goat. For a lewton bus. Or to put it another way: Wes Craven had a low budget and access to a goat for some reason.
  • Is that a f*cking synthesiser? You’ve lost more of those awesome points I gave you earlier. I suppose this is why when people talk about this film they don’t mention the soundtrack like they do when talking about Halloween etc.
  • That sounds like a laser blast sound used as a jump scare. I get it was the 80’s and the sound guys had cocaine blocking their ears, but still.
  • Who the hell brings a gardening tool to a party? This douche, (Rod) that’s who. I hope he dies.
  • Girl is so pleased Rod brought a gardening tool she let’s him put his Rod/tool inside her. What a hoe.
  • Freddy coming through roof is fantastic image it has to be said.
  • “Morality sucks”. Wow, this film’s so 80’s it even quotes the Conservative Party slogan from the Thatcher era.
  • Time of first death: 16 minutes. Details: actually really damn creepy. She’s being attacked in the dream world but we only see it from the real world. So instead of an intense fight we just see her writing about screaming as blood appears on her, then she kind of crawls backwards up the wall and across ceiling. Really creepily done and a brilliant set-piece.
  • Freddy cuts himself a lot in this film. I get why, is an effective way to scare someone, but it’s done so quickly it kind of loses it’s creepiness. It’s too quick and clean which robs of it of any impact.
  • Bathtub scene, with no nudity. If this film was shot today I’m fairly certain this scene would be mostly nipple shots, I hate hollywood sometimes.
  • So her friend died and she’s being hunted down, so she decides to watch a nice relaxing movie: The Evil Dead.
  • “what happened to your arm?” “i burned it in english class”. And he doesn’t make a joke about it, damn you Johnny Depp you suck.
  • “Oh god I look 20 years old”, as someone who’s nearly 30, f*ck you! Wait, wouldn’t it be good to look slightly older at that point as it means you might get served alcohol?
  • Time Of Second death: 43 Minutes. The “rod getting hanged” scene: the nike shoes were on screen a bit too long for my liking and makes it seem like product placement. Didn’t like this death that much mainly because it happened to a character we hadn’t seen in a long time, (in contrast, Tina was one of the first people we saw and it could be argued that she’s taking the role of the main character until her death).
  • Why is Rod the first guy to get a funeral scene when his characterisation literally begins and ends with “penis”?
  • “mommy killed him” mommy also hides alcohol around the house and decided to keep a souvenir of the person she killed twenty years ago, so something tells me she’s not a good person.
  • “you’re the jock, you have a baseball bat or something” that’s racist!
  • Johnny Depp’s character comes to his room and wakes him up in order to tell him to go to sleep.
  • Although his dad is only in it for about 2 scenes so far and already seems like a massive jerkass.
  • Time of the death of Depp: 70 minutes. This is probably the most iconic death in the series, he gets dragged into the bed and blood splatters everywhere, but personally it doesn’t do much for me.
  • She managed to do a lot of booby trapping in a house in only twenty minutes. And all just after reading a book about it. I’m fairly certain this section is a horror version of Home Alone, if the horrific version of Home Alone wasn’t Home Alone 3.
  • Wait, did she just shout the villain into non-existence? See, this is why English horror films are different. If shouting at a villain killed it all horror films set in Britain would last about 5 minutes. Yeah, they’ll be people apologising as you kill them “oh, I appear to have got my blood on your knives, ever so sorry old chap” “oh, you appear to have dropped your weapon, here you go” but all killers make a mistake, in American films it’s usually something like not taking opportunities to kill, in British ones it would be when the killer makes tea and puts the milk in first, then they’ll be shouted at so much they’ll die without a sequel. Actually someone should do that, a short horror film where the killer stalks someone and in the end they just shout out “OH F*CK OFF YOU F*CKING F*CK before I beat your head in, I’m hungover and got work in a few hours, I don’t need this shit”
  • So, that’s an ending. Bad body-double aside this is just weird. The only way it makes sense is if you take it not as the dream of the lead character, but as a dream of the mother. Which makes more sense as she is revealed to have died in a later film, but also makes less sense as she’s dreaming about her daughters friends waaaaay too much. Unless she’s dreaming of them all as she feels guilty for their deaths and that haunts her every waking moment. I might be giving this film too much credit.
  • Surprisingly low amount of deaths. If we include the mother’s death that’s only 4 in the entire film. Yet still chilling.

Quick summary: odd music choices but works in parts.

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