Sometimes They Come Back

In 1990, high school history teacher Jim Norman (Tim Matheson) returns to his childhood home town for the first time in 27 years, with his wife Sally (Brooke Adams) and young son Scott (Robert Hy Gorman).
In 1963, nine year old Jim (Zachary Ball) and his fifteen year old brother Wayne (Chris Demetral) are walking through a railway tunnel on the way to the library when they are set upon by a gang of teenage greasers who kill Wayne, but are themselves almost immediately killed by a train.
Despite still being haunted by nightmares of his brother's death, Jim and his family settle in, and he starts teaching at the local high school, bonding with some students and making enemies of others.  However, the students who Jim gets close to start dying in apparent suicides, and are replaced in class by students who look suspiciously like the gang who murdered Wayne.
Jim realises that the spirits of the dead gang members have returned and are set on revenge.

This film was originally made for TV and was first broadcast in 1991, directed by Tom McLoughlin.  Based on a short story by Stephen King, it's a pretty by the numbers horror film, that features plenty of King tropes.  Made on a low budget without particular style or flair, with a cast of solid performers, including veteran William Sanderson, who all try their best with stodgy material (pity Brooke Adams, who really has nothing to do here at all except be alternately supportive and scared).  The story is not one of Stephen King's best and the screenwriters, Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, have trouble punching it up to feature length.  The film is at it's best when the focus is on the ghoulish greasers who (as played by Robert Rusler, Bentley Mitchum and Nicholas Sadler) are ominous and threatening, although we never find out enough about them, they have no backgrounds or personalities, and are portrayed as pack animals (they growl, bray and howl like wolves).
Probably due to the limits of television in 1991, the film is light on blood and gore.  At times it seems more like a supernatural drama about coming to terms with grief, than it is about shocks and scares, and the two sides don't gel together.  The biggest problem that the film has is that it offers nothing new.  Really, if you're interested at all in horror, than you've seen it all before.

Flatliners

Medical student Courtney Holmes (played by Ellen Page) convinces her reluctant friends to take part in an experiment during which she will be clinically dead before they resuscitate her, so that she can learn first hand what happens after death.  After the experiment Courtney finds herself with a new lease on life and astonishing powers of memory.  After seeing the effects, Courtney's friends all want to undergo the experience.  However, it soon turns out that flatlining has some much darker side effects, as the students begin to be haunted by bizarre and disturbing visions.

Although referred to as a sequel to the 1990 film Flatliners, this 2017 film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, is really a remake.  Keifer Sutherland, who starred in the original, does appear in this, although as a different character.  This is a fun film, with a good cast.  Despite being a horror film, it's really not scary at all, and suffers from being too long.  The characters aren't particularly explored and are more or less cliched.  It also suffers from having too pat a conclusion.  There is plenty of humour, the characters manage to rise above the material, and it is exciting, and the flatlining sequences are well executed.
I can't really say how fans of the original Flatliners will take to the remake, because I've not seen the original in years, and can't remember much about it.   

I Am Behind You

This 2014 horror novel is the sixth book from Swedish stand-up comedian turned author John Ajvide Lindqvist to be translated into English.  Four families on caravan holidays wake up one morning to find the rest of their campsite has vanished. In fact everything has vanished, they are totally alone in the middle of a seemingly endless blank, flat field, where, despite clear bright blue summer skies, there is no sun, and the grass is the exact same height.  Where are they?  How did they get there? Why are they there? and, more importantly, how can they get back?  Running low on food and supplies, their situation is desperate, but there is something else out there.  Something that knows their worst mistakes and deepest desires, and will confront them with their darkest dreams and worst fears, and something even worse.

Lindqvist is still probably best known for his debut novel, Let the Right One In (2004) which was  adapted as an acclaimed Swedish film in 2008 and a successful US remake, Let Me In (2010).  With Let the Right One In and his subsequent books, there can be little doubt that John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of the most interesting modern writers working in horror.  The characters in this book start off wondering where they are and how they got there, and are little the wiser by the end of it.  For every question that is answered, another is posed, and it really seems to just stop dead.  However, this is the first volume in a planned trilogy, so presumably we'll find out what happens later.  The ending, though is a fairly minor issue when this is such a chilling, gripping novel and genuinely disturbing.  It's full of dark humour and often graphic gore.  The frequently surreal happenings in the book work because the  characters are interesting and well-drawn, with their past lives depicted in flashback.  Lindqvist is frequently compared to Stephen King, and this has a lot of King-like elements to it, with the disparate collection of ordinary people having to band together against horrific adversaries, although it's more like if Stephen King had ever collaborated with Ingmar Bergman, because it has a very strong philosophical element to it.  Lindqvist his a particular gift for writing about children and one of the child characters, six year old Molly is one of the most terrifying characters you're likely to read about this year.  This is definitely recommended.

Mother!

A young woman (Jennifer Lawrence), referred to as "Mother" in the credits, although nine of the characters are named in the film, is married to a successful poet (Javier Bardem), who is suffering from writer's block.  They live together in a rambling country house which she is renovating after a severe fire.  One night a strange couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) arrive and insinuate themselves into the lives of the homeowners.  It then gets progressively darker and weirder as more and more people invade the couple's home.

This film from writer/director Darren Aronofsky is frankly bizarre.  It's full of striking, memorable images and sequences, and Jennifer Lawrence gives a fantastic, tortured performance.  Some of it though is frankly tedious, and almost the whole thing makes very little sense.  It's probably best to see the film as an allegory, not to be taken literally, and there is likely to be a lot of discussion about what it actually means.  My take on it is that Jennifer Lawrence just wants to be left in piece with her family, but it's impossible to escape from the demands and intrusion of the world outside.  It's worth watching for it's sheer ambition.  You'll likely not see much like this, certainly not from a mainstream Hollywood release.  Personally I didn't enjoy the film, but I'm glad that I saw it, and I*'m still trying to decode what the hell it's all about.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

A group of teenage friends in a small American town find themselves pursued in their dreams by a horrifically burned figure armed with a glove which has razor-sharp blades attached to the fingers.  If they are killed in their dreams, they die in reality too.  As the friends are killed off one by one, the survivors have to stay awake long enough to figure out a way to fight their dreams.

Released in 1984, this film is one of the most influential horror films of the 1980s and possibly one of the most influential horror movies of all time, introducing the iconic movie villain Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund), and spawning six direct sequels, a TV series (Freddy's Nightmares (1988-1990)), a crossover with the Friday the 13th franchise (Freddy vs. Jason (2003)) and a remake in 2010.  By and large the film sticks to the well-established slasher movie formula, but given a supernatural twist.  The death scenes are, by and large, imaginative and well-staged.  Another reason why the film works so well is the simple fact that everyone sleeps and dreams, and our dreams are always beyond our control, and it plays with the idea that is we are harmed in a dream we could be harmed in real-life as well (the idea that dying in a dream equals dying in real life is a very old one, and it used to be believed that this is why we wake up at the very last minute, a kind of psychological escape hatch so we don't snuff it in our sleep because we happened to have a midnight snack).  Writer-director Wes Craven was inspired by a series of disturbing real-lifer incidents from the 1970s where refugees from Southeast Asia refused to sleep after suffering terrifying nightmares, some of them subsequently died in their sleep.

The film creates a believably cluttered suburban setting, and is elevated by Craven's obvious affection for his teenage characters, who are played by a talented cast headed by Heather Langenkemp who gives a great performance mixing vulnerability and strength as the strong-minded Nancy, and a very young Johnny Depp as her boyfriend Glen.  Of course, the standout performance is Freddy Krueger who, coupled with his memorable appearance, gives Freddy a gleefully cruel wit, before the character became a pop culture joke.         

It

This is an adaptation of the 1986 novel by Stephen King.  Set in 1989 (as opposed to the novel's 1958 setting) in the small town of Derry, Maine, which has been terrorised by a spate of mysterious disappearances of children.  Seven young outcasts, who call themselves "The Loser's Club" decide to put a stop to it:  Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) has a bad stutter and his younger brother, Georgie, is among the missing; Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor) is picked on because he is overweight; Beverley Marsh (Sophia Lillis) is abused by her father and is the subject of cruel rumours; Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard) is the group clown, often getting in trouble due to his loud mouth and foul language; Stan Uris (Wyatt Oleff) is picked on because he is Jewish; Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) is subjected to racist bullying; and Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer) has become a hypochondriac due to his over-protective mother.  They discover that the culprit is Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgard), who is in reality an evil, shapeshifting entity which feeds on fear, particularly children's fear. 

Previously adapted as a two part TV miniseries in 1990 which was re-edited into a feature film; It is one of Stephen King's best known books.  The film lacks the richness of the book, but is an effective horror film, with a reliance on sudden jump scares.  It is well acted, and the film really shines in  the quieter character moments.  

The Girl with All the Gifts

This 2014 novel from writer M. R. Carey (the pen-name of British writer Mike Carey, whose probably best known as a comics writer probably best known for his runs on X-Men, John Constantine: Hellblazer, Lucifer and his own series The Unwritten), is a striking post-apocalyptic science-fiction / horror tale.  Set in a near future Britain, ten year old Melanie is a bright, intelligent, friendly girl who loves school, particularly her favourite teacher Miss Justineau.  She lives in a cell on a military base.  Every day soldiers strap her to a wheelchair at gunpoint, muzzle her and take her to her classes with the other children on the base, similarly strapped and muzzled.  Occasionally there are new faces.  More often children disappear and are never seen again.  Outside the  world is gone, most of the population has become infected by a fungus that turns humans into cannibalistic zombies known as "Hungries".

This a deeply affecting, exciting, thrilling, and occasionally surprisingly tender story.  The plot moves along at a brisk pace, with interesting and engaging characters.  The are some plot contrivances, with characters often being rescued from certain death at the very last moment, and it's full of stuff that you will probably have seen before in many other zombie apocalypse stories (of which there have been a lot!).

  

The Limehouse Golem

Limehouse is one of the poorest and roughest areas of Victorian London where every kind of crime, degradation and vice is rampant, and now it is targeted by a brutal serial killer, the so-called "Limehouse Golem" which strikes seemingly at random, targeting the young, the old, men and women.  World weary Police Inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy), who has been passed over for promotion due to rumours about his private life, is put in charge of the case and during the investigation finds himself drawn to troubled music hall actress Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), who is on trial for the poisoning of her husband, one of several suspects in the Golem case.

Based on the novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd, this is a lurid, full-blooded Victorian melodrama, rich with atmosphere and period detail.  It's full of gore and horror, but also works as an intriguing mystery.  The film uses historical figures as characters, such as Karl Marx (Henry Goodman), novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) and comedian Dan Leno (Douglas Booth).  Bill Nighy is great as the sensitive, troubled police inspector and the connection he forms with  Elizabeth is genuinely touching.  The film explores themes of social inequality and the pursuit of fame.

Show Pieces

Alan Moore is possibly one of the most important and influential figures in the entire history of comics, the creator/writer of Watchmen (1986), V for Vendetta (1988-89), From Hell (1989-1996) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen  (1999 - current) and the writer of one of the most influential and controversial Batman stories of all time, "The Killing Joke" (1988) among many others.  A lot of his work has been adapted to film, with varying degrees of success.  However Moore himself has been famously against any of the film adaptations, to the extent of refusing payment and taking his name off the credits.  However here is something that he has written specifically for the screen.  Show Pieces is actually five short films, three of which have been collected into a linked anthology.

In "Act of Faith", a young newspaper journalist (Siobhan Hewlett) makes a rash decision with deadly consequences, in "Jimmy's End" a heavy drinking womaniser (Darrell D'Silva) enters a bizarre and sinister working men's club, and in "His Heavy Heart" a man is forced into a nightmarish version of Ancient Egyptian funerary rites.

Directed by Mitch Jenkins, the film is visually very striking, with a powerfully oppressive, bleak atmosphere, and a minimum of graphic gore.  More atmospheric and disturbing than actively scary, it has a strong thread of dark humour.

 

Ring 2

Last night I watched the Japanese movie Ring 2 from 1999, directed by Hideo Nakata. 

The Ring series began as a novel by Koji Suzuki.  The series is about a VHS video tape.  After some unfortunate person has viewed it they are condemned to die in exactly seven days.  The 1998 film adaptation was a sensation both in Japan and internationally and kickstarted the popularity of "J-horror" in the west.

Suzuki wrote a sequel to Ring called Spiral, which was turned into a film that was originally intended to be the official sequel to the 1998 film, the two were shot back to back.  However, Spiral did very poorly at the box office, and so they decided to shelve it and make this film to replace it.  This film has no connection to the Suzuki novel.   This film also has nothing to do with The Ring Two, the sequel to the US remake of Ring (confused yet?)  

This film picks up several days after the conclusion of the first film, and reunited the first film's director, Nakata, and many of the cast.   Mai Takano (played by Miki Nakatana) is a young research assistant, who is investigating the mysterious fate of her boss, and, with the aid of a newspaper reporter, comes into contact with the cursed video and her boss's young child Yoichi (Rikiya Otaka) who has a powerful psychic ability and whose strong feelings of rage and fear have the ability to summon the vengeful spirit Sadako Yamamura (Rie Ino), who is behind the Ring curse. 

The film really seems to have divided people, and a lot of people really don't seem to like it, but I did, it's not as good as the first one, and there is nothing in this film that is as iconic as the conclusion of Ring.  It's not a scary film, it's more of a supernatural mystery, but it is atmospheric.

Seoul Station

An elderly man stumbles into Seoul Station, bleeding profusely from his neck.  He joins the anonymous homeless community living in and around the large railway station.  This man proves the catalyst for a zombie plague that threatens to wipe out South Korea's capital city.  A young runaway finds herself caught up in the madness, so to does her boyfriend and her father who desperately search the chaos to find her.  Although, they may not have her best interests at heart.

For the most part this is an interesting animated Korean zombie film.  Mostly it's another zombie film, of the type that will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen Dawn of the Dead or any of the other innumerable zombie movies that had cropped up over the years, or indeed anyone who has ever seen an episode of The Walking Dead.  There is some tension and there are some pretty effective action scenes, but it kind of falls flat at the end.

It's still worth watching though.

    

The Conjuring 2

In 2013 The Conjuring was a surprise hit, a supernatural horror film based on the allegedly true exploits of ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga).  This time round, after a prologue dealing with the famous "Amityville Horror" case, the investigation centres on the "Enfield Haunting" case, supposedly the best documented case of alleged supernatural activity.  In 1977, in the Enfield area of London, the Hodgson family are plagued by bizarre events, and the Warrens are called in from the US to investigate whether or not there is sufficient evidence for the church to get involved.  Lorraine is initially reluctant because she has had premonitions of Ed's death.  

The original was notable for being a slow-burning, subtle, creepy story.  This one however is more like a ghost train ride, with at least three different ghosts or demons, and more liberal use of special effects.  Director James Wan has a good eye for detail, and the 1970s suburban English setting is well realised, even if the 1970s detail is sometimes laid on a little too thick, and for the most part, certainly in the first half of the film, the jump scares are choreographed pretty well.  The main problem is that it is just too long, at over two hours, and it loses a lot of it's impact in the second half.  There is a very strong religious element which is laid on too thickly, and didn't really work for me.

It's not bad though, and fans of the original will probably enjoy it.

      

Theatre of Blood

This 1973 film is a hilarious blend of comedy and horror.  Edward Lionheart (played by the great Vincent Price) is a Shakespearean actor who, nevertheless, has had some less than stellar reviews.  When he is passed over for the prestigious Critic's Circle Award, he is humiliated and his career is ruined.  Seeking revenge, he starts to murder the critics one by one, in methods taken from Shakespeare's more bizarre and gruesome murders.

This film really is non-stop entertainment.  It's less of a conventional horror film and more a gruesome, campy, melodramatic, dark comedy.  Price was attracted to the role because he had always wanted to play Shakespeare, but his typecasting in horror roles stopped him from being chosen.  In this film, he gets to deliver a number of Shakespeare's greatest speeches, and adopt some hilarious personas (one hilarious sequence has Price playing a flamboyantly camp hairdresser with a massive afro).  In fact, for any actor this would be a career highlight, playing so many different roles, and doing comedy, drama and action in one film.  Diana Rigg plays Lionheart's daughter and partner in crime, and also turns in a hugely entertaining performance in a number of different disguises.  A number of familiar British thespians, such as Ian Hendry, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley, Eric Sykes and Diana Dors,  join in the fun.

It also features the funniest fencing sequence ever seen in film.