Since I was watching a lot of horror movies recently anyway, I decided I might try to keep the habit going for the duration of October. I’ve seen mention of folks watching 31 horror movies this month, but even in my attempt to get caught up on horror over a couple of months about 8-9 years back when I was really needing movies as an escape and had the time, I don’t think I managed that speed, so I think me getting through a movie every 2-3 days is fair enough. There’s something to be said, also, of quality over quantity, but I know that argument fails in my sometimes random, near-blind choices.
We left off in September and the only movie I didn’t yet write about was, indeed, horror, so we start there to fill in the gap, but everything after the first of these I wrote in the following hours of seeing the film. Fresh thoughts?! Who knew it was possible.
Apartment 7A
I didn’t know this was a Rosemary’s Baby prequel right away – I’ve said many a time now that I usually avoid trailers and synopses and fill my to-watch queue with abandon far in advance of watching anything – but the idea clicked into place regardless. Did Rosemary’s Baby need a prequel? Absolutely not. Did this add anything to that universe? I mean, technically… but its value is questionable. The first scenes of the movie hit and the idea could have been twisted to be a standalone movie instead. The ending made logical sense but also fell a bit flat. Puns!
American Werewolf In London
I had many thoughts watching this after not seeing it since the 90s but the TLDR is that it still holds up 43 years later. Kid/teen me missed Miss Piggy commenting on the value of violence in art in the background of one scene, so that was extra fun. If for some crazy reason you’ve never seen this and you enjoy horror, please do the thing.
The Devil’s Bath
Incredibly slow atmospheric almost-horror about a lady having a real hard time because her new marriage and the community in which she lives sucks. I feel ya, lady. I was going for mental vacation and not soul mirrors when I can conjure frustration about humanity just fine on my own, so am disappoint, but it was a thing. RIYL You Won’t Be Alone + The VVitch.
AfrAId
A live version of The Atomic Bitchwax “The Destroyer” just shuffled on and the last minute and a half of listening to a real band play real instruments 19 years ago was more compelling to my soul than an hour-plus of whatever this was. Not the worst movie I’ve seen by any stretch, but it has the impact of american cheese on cold stale white bread. They triedTM but no thanks.
Speak No Evil
I didn’t realize I was watching a remake right away, so here’s my original review from two years ago to start with: Speak No Evil (2022): two families decide to hang out at one of their homes. turns out the one family sucks. this had several languages in it but i don’t think you need to speak any of them to understand what happens due to the universally uncomfortable ride the visiting family goes through. i actually got preemptively upset at a key scene because i could see things were about to turn and i had to shut off the movie for a while to recover from what i hadn’t yet watched. not a fan of the ending but who would be.
And Speak No Evil (2024): I realized this was a remake a few minutes in, what with the plot of the original being so unique. The details got puzzle-pieced around and the scene that made me stop the original didn’t have the same impact, but I’d guess most folks aren’t going to watch the original so they aren’t going to know what’s coming nor what’s been twisted for AmericansTM. The key change at the end of the movie made me giggle and then laugh at myself for laughing. Both of these are worth watching for the different emotional takes on the viewer side, but longtime horror-thriller fans will better appreciate the tension and consistent mood of the original. That said, I apparently seem to love when movies do the anti-sanctimonious thing and don’t play into stupid rules.
Swallowed
This would be a good movie to use to weed out people who are showing red flags of being super into masculinity and social decorum. It featured a porn star whose friend wants to give him a going away present, which goes awry, and it devolves into an adventure that sucks. Shots are mostly too close which adds to the nauseated feeling of what’s going on despite apparently being low budget. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one unless you’re looking for more gay rep in horror, but it leans closer to crime-thriller territory despite technically being body horror.
Cuckoo
A welcome sort of weird. I heard Dan Stevens’ voice and immediately knew this was going to be some level of interesting. The overall tone, character focus, and figure-it-out-yourself-dumbass vibe puts this in line with I Saw The TV Glow. Most plot discussion is a spoiler, but the focus of the movie was on a teenager who’s pissed she has to live with dad in a creepy place. One time I was at my dad’s and a lady high on something and likely looking for more crazy juice suddenly slammed open my door to speed-talk nonsense at me before just-as-suddenly beelining in the direction of my dad, so I get it. Thankfully, I was not impregnated from that encounter, but she probably already instinctively knew my DNA was unsuitable trash.
I originally wrote something different for Cuckoo, but it got derailed by a separate thought so I rewrote it… hence the extra creativity towards the end there. That actually happened, if not the relevant movie part to it, but my original thought went somewhere entirely different after I got to thinking of I Saw The TV Glow again.
I need to backtrack so this doesn’t sound like it means something it doesn’t. I watched plenty of movies and TV as a teenager, but I wasn’t particularly obsessive about any of it. I liked what I liked, I hoped for more good things, but I would have chosen to live my life and have more “real” experiences over watching TV, and save for the buffer hour after I got home from school, I usually did. That said, in I Saw The TV Glow during the scene where they’re discussing sexuality and the main character pauses and says he likes TV, I felt that hard. Teenage me was not meaningfully into anyone and seeing that level of representation 25-30 years too late was fan-fucking-tastic. Until later scenes that recontextualized things into more of a trans experience, I interpreted that as an expression of asexuality. How often does that happen? Just about never.
My sexuality turned out not to have a clear-cut label, but my acceptance of heteronormativity shifted in my teen years regardless to believing bi/pan is much more likely the human default. This thought automatically goes back to gender, especially in context of the movie thoughts, and I was reminded of a recent conversation.
I was talking to a straight white cis man. He was whining that he was, in short, disappointed by modern movies and then said most movies these days weren’t made for him (straight men) anyway. My initial thoughts were it was obviously for the lack of trying because I find gems all of the time. Who knew The Substance was going to be THAT good? But he didn’t watch horror and only seemed to skim the surface of media for paths already traveled, so of course he was going to get surface results. It’s the same garbage argument people use to say modern music sucks when they only pay attention to so-called radio music, meanwhile I can’t keep up whether we’re talking Grammy pop or doom only released through Bandcamp.
Sitting on the thought, I recalled all of the movies I watched as a kid, teen, adult specifically made for a male-centric, male gaze audience. Some of these are all-time favorite movies. Even catering to a certain taste (avoiding gritty movies and horror), I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem enjoying a movie even if it completely failed the Bechdel Test. I’m not particularly wowed by “general audiences” or family movies and tend to avoid them, but I still watch them occasionally and find value in the doing.
Watching so many horror movies in a row where folks across the spectrum of life are getting the horror treatment in ways that generally have nothing to do with me as a person, I’m left wondering how lacking one’s imagination or ability to feel empathy must be that self-rep or group-rep is a requirement to appreciate an interesting story.
I also wonder if there’s a point in straight white guys’ lives where they decide the media they consume must represent them as an individual member of Team Dude. I’m a man now – I can’t be watching none of that kid/woman/LGBT shit! Or, often, anything not properly filtered as okay if a member of a not-white race might show up on screen. I’m reminded of more than a decade ago getting excited about the movie Ponyo and a 30-some year old man said he wasn’t going to watch it. How embarrassing would that be, being seen watching an animated movie that hams up the cuteness. We all individually have our tastes and preferences and boundaries, but it struck me as ridiculous because it’s a fantastic, well-rated movie. It wasn’t like me waffling over a top-rated hero movie and putting it off into oblivion until I’m finally in the right headspace for it; he plainly said he wasn’t going to watch it. Back to modern day, it has become a personal joke to read IMDB reviews after I see a movie, especially one that features black people, has a lady protagonist, or features rainbow spectrum or non-gaze sexual content – let’s play “spot the man” in the reviews! They’re always so disappointed that they had to follow the journey of someone who didn’t echo their personal reflection.
We could also flip this around and target the other side of the coin for me when it comes to music, where I’ve been belittled and out-grouped in so-called female spaces because of my inclination for metalisms despite knowing about other genres, often better than they do. There’s a superficial perception that it’s “for men” due to its sonic aggression or darkness. Meanwhile I – me, a lady – am loving that a work metal band just released a new album that sounds like it falls off a psychological cliff entering rip-in-spacetime horror territory, and I’m looking forward to hopefully someday talking about that band’s American tour dates again. If I can find comfort and intrigue here, why not you?
This all got me thinking about what I value in media. Creativity, novelty, weirdness, and fresh perspectives came to mind. I’d much rather see folks upset, shaken up, confused, or offended that something exists in an artistic space than live in a world that sucks because people refuse to question and keep doing the same shit over and over. So, it stands to reason I would be attracted to finding more interesting media and not residing myself to a particular script of self-representation, and would similarly find someone who can’t enjoy something because they don’t seem themselves in it very internally lacking.
That said, narcissism is a big term getting thrown around these days, and one really wonders if that’s a core value of ye olde straight white guy.
Hard to believe I had such difficulty with English classes, but god damn did I hate that class. Science all the things.
More horror later.