Saturday, October 13, 2018

OCTOBER-THON V Quick Reviews - Part 1




 Greetings, Film Fanatics!

With the first ten films in the books for October, I wanted to put out a quick review on each as time won't allow me to get too in-depth if I want to get to at least thirty-one in for the month. I am going to release them five at a time, so you're not left with a novella.

I will say that this first leg of the marathon has been less of a bang and more of a whimper, but unlike previous years where I would blend the familiar with the unfamiliar, this year I decided to do all titles that I have yet to see before or films that I haven't seen in so long that I barely remember them. Hopefully the risks will start to yield some rewards.

Now, with all of that out of the way, let's dig in!

#1: "THE OPEN HOUSE" (2018)

As far as premises go, one can do much worse than "The Open House". It doesn't lend itself to any big sparks of creativity, but I can get behind a faceless antagonist that uses open houses as perfect places to hide while potential buyers shuffle in and out without much notice being paid by the realtors. Having just gone through the home buying/selling process, I felt a plot like this was almost too fitting. The set piece of the big, isolated home in the mountains with a creepy cellar additionally worked to the film's advantage, except that is exactly not what ended up happening.

I want to say there was a much grander idea at play here from Writers/Directors Matt Angle and Suzanne Coote, and then that idea was hacked to pieces by the studio for budgetary reasons, because the flow and all the various character nuances make no sense. Characters appear and disappear, act multiple shades of strange, but none of that has any impact on the story or its climax. Also, while I doubt strong lead performances could have saved it, Dylan Minnette and Piercey Dalton are really phoning it in here, which suggested to me that even if the final cut of "Open House" did indeed not complete the vision of Angle and Coote, the actors still didn't buy into it. It's the kind of bad that's not even worth getting upset about, as there were not enough positive impacts to make it any kind of memorable.

3/10


#2: "MOTEL HELL" (1980)

I think my biggest surprise with "Motel Hell" was how restrained it turned out to be in terms of violence. Given the poster art and concept, I was expecting it to be dripping with '80s cheese and gory bliss; instead, the film relied much more on implications of bodily mutilations and coasted on the performances of the main cast. Of course it's goofy in more ways than not, though that's what it made it such a good time.

There's really not much more I can say about it. If you enjoy some '80s horror, I highly recommend it.

8/10


#3: "MOM AND DAD" (2018)

"Mom and Dad", a.k.a. "Pornography For Parents of Teenagers and I Dare Any of You to Deny That With a Straight Face", has almost a beat-for-beat spoof feel of "Dawn of the Dead" in a way that, for a while, is kind of awesome. Obviously, as one might automatically and justifiably assume, the film's success is going to rely heavily on Nicolas Cage and his - shall we say - Cage-isms. He does venture in cringe territory when his leash gets a little too much slack, but overall he is curiously fun to watch in ways that only he can. Sadly, the film unravels quickly when it begins to run out of ideas. A plot predicated on cartoon violence should really take that idea and just run with it with increasingly over-the-top antics; however, the pace comes to a screeching halt at the end of the Second Act when the narrative attempts to justify the sudden bloodthirsty attitudes of the parents, and unfortunately it never truly recovers. By that point, I really couldn't get reinvested and left feeling mostly "Meh". Fingers crossed that "Mandy" turns out to be much better.

4.5/10


#4: "DEMON HOUSE" (2018)

Sometimes I wonder why I keep subjecting myself to Zak Bagans and all of his bullshit. Logically, I imagine it's because his show "Ghost Adventures" is the most popular and accessible, and I have a deeply rooted desire to see some actual evidence of the paranormal. Believe me, I'm as healthily skeptical as the next guy, but I am open-minded to the possibility of things we cannot yet explain, and sometimes ghost hunting does offer ever-so-faint hints of that realm. Yes, I realize that the allure of "Ghost Adventures" isn't Bagans, since his charisma is somehow painfully less entertaining than standing in line at the DMV, so I wasn't at all surprised when his supposedly three-year pet project film about his investigation of a house haunted by a goat man he saw in a dream turned out to be complete unsubstantiated garbage littered with his robotic narration and re-enactments of what he supposedly saw instead of any records that he could at least try to sell as legitimate. Hell, there was even a segment of a priest's voice recording of an exorcism that had nothing on it other than, basically, "Ok, here goes..."

Unlike "The Open House", this is the kind of bad that bothers me, because Bagans has to know what he is selling, and I am willing to bet he makes a hefty price tag in the process. Normally, I would try to find something, anything, positive to assess a point or two towards, but there's really nothing redeeming about this. This film both objectively and subjectively pissed me off.

0/10


#5: "THE BROOD" (1979)

Even though I wouldn't call "The Brood" one of Cronenberg's greatest achievements, I do have a soft spot for its more "out there" yet straight forward approach to body horror that I can only imagine raised a few eyebrows nearly forty years ago; not to mention that the final cut was supposedly toned down a bit from his original version. I also enjoyed its different brand of storytelling where, in a way, feels like it is starting right in the middle of the Second Act where character introductions are limited and demon children start appearing fairly quickly as the overarching narrative and character dialogues slowly unravel the mystery in the background in a way not often seen in modern cinema anymore. It doesn't always work as smoothly as it should, especially as a bulk of the characters are not allowed to break outside anything two-dimensional; although, the climax can make you forget all of that in a hurry.

"The Brood" is definitely stylish for its time, and at a slick ninety minutes, it doesn't over stay its welcome. That being said, a little more depth could have gone a long way.

7.5/10



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