Ink of Blood

So, I’ve never actually played Five Nights at Freddy’s…well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve played some of the game. A couple of minutes, before I ended up dying. But my oldest nibling really likes the game and the lore…and when I realised they were making a movie of it, I was immediately interested in seeing that. No one should find my desire a surprise if they know me, considering that horror is my bread and butter movie genre.

I did find it really easy to relate to Mike almost straight away. While it wasn’t clear what had happened to his parents and what resulted in him having to be the guardian of his little sister Abby, it was immediately clear that he was struggling with the guilt from his brother’s disappearance, and the fact that his life was now spent trying to find out what had happened to Garrett made him a really sympathetic character.

I really didn’t like Aunt Jane, which was probably supposed to happen in the movie. She was quite obviously meant to be a villain…and her lawyer’s actions made me stretch my suspension of disbelief, especially when he stayed and listened to her hiring people to try and mess up Mike’s life. Yes, I find ghost kids possessing anatromic robots more realistic than a lawyer ignoring his client breaking the law by hiring a group of young people to vandalise her nephew’s place of work.

For a lot of the movie, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Vanessa’s character. At first, I thought she was a police officer who just happened to have Freddy’s on her patrol route. As the movie went on, however, it became obvious that she knew a lot more than she was saying. And I did enjoy her interactions with Mike, especially as she was clearly quite sympathetic to his problems and attempts to figure out what had happened to his brother.

I thought there were some really good elements of foreshadowing in this movie…and one thing that I thought worked really well was the fact that, although there were elements of horror and violence, there wasn’t a lot of gore shown. I’ve mentioned before that I think a lot of horror movies are made by people who forget that less is more…and I was really happy to see that was utilised in this movie.

I mentioned above that I haven’t actually played much of the games this movie is based on, but my oldest nibling did tell me there were a lot of good easter eggs included…and they enjoyed the movie. So did I, despite being less familiar with the games. So if you’re on the fence about seeing this movie, whether you’ve played the games or not, I would definitely recommend seeing this if you enjoy horror movies!

I did read the original novel tihs movie was based on, a few years ago, so I at least had an idea of the storyline before I went to see this movie at the cinema…the last classic horror movie I ended up watching in October at Cineworld, actually.

In the movie, it’s not very clear exactly what Christine is possessed by…whether it’s a demon, a ghost, or something more sinister. Arnie’s obsession with the car is very obvious from the beginning, the very moment he sees it. In many ways, his changes after purchasing Christine made me quite sad. In the beginning, before he purchased the car, he was a much more likable person…and I liked his friendship with Dennis. In some ways, the changes he underwent after getting Christine were actually good, as he became much more confident. However, that confidence made him lose a lot of his core self. It was more obvious in the novel, where he starts getting taken over by the spirit of the car’s previous owner, but it’s still very clear in the movie that he loses what makes him a ‘good’ person.

I really didn’t like Leigh, to be quite honest. I had the strong feeling that she only started dating Arnie after he was influenced by Christine, which means she never really knew Arnie as himself. I would have liked it more if the film focused on Dennis, in much the same way the book did. Unfortunately, Leigh just irritated me by the end of the movie…even when she and Dennis were trying to stop the car. Dennis seemed to do a lot more than her, even with his leg in a cast.

I probably shouldn’t have felt some sympathy towards Christine…but I actually did. That was probably helped by the fact that I really disliked Buddy and his gang. For most of the movie, I was waiting for them to get their comeuppance…and I really couldn’t fault Christine for taking her revenge on them, after they completely destroyed her and ruined all of the hard work Arnie had put into her. In many ways, she made me think of a wounded, feral animal who was lashing out at anyone who had hurt her…and anyone who might hurt her. Probably not the feel that the movie was going for, but that’s what I felt.

I did enjoy watching this movie for what it was and that it’s one of the classic horror movies…but I don’t think I’d watch this movie again. I’d be interested in a sequel that perhaps explores Christine coming back; maybe to get revenge, maybe for another reason…maybe something that further explores her origins. Does she hold onto Arnie’s spirit the same way she seemed to hold onto her previous owner’s spirit in the book? That’s a question I’d be interested in seeing the answer to.

This was another old classic horror movie that I ended up watching last month at Cineworld. I actually did see it on Friday the 13th, too, which was fitting.

The movie started out as a fairly stereotypical slasher movie, with two camp counselors getting butchered by an unknown assailant at Camp Crystal Lake. Fast forward a year and the camp is being reopened, despite all of the tragedies that have taken place…beginning with the drowning of a little boy.

Despite knowing that this movie was a slasher that would end with most, if not all, of the characters being brutally murdered, I did develop a bit of a soft spot for Annie, especially when she stopped to talk to the dog that was tied up…an action which I can imagine I’d do. So that made me like her quite a bit in this movie…although I wasn’t so emotionally connected with her that I was really sad when she inevitably died.

Obviously, this movie being one of the first slasher movies meant that there were a lot of cliches that later movies (like Scream) have mocked, such as the final girl cliche and the fact that virgins are safer from the killers than those who are more sexually active.

One thing that I will say I really liked about this movie was that the young people came across as really irresponsible and only caring about having a good time. However, the moment they thought someone was actually in danger, they immediately went into action. Perhaps if the camp counselors at the beginning had been more like them, the events of the rest of the movie (and subsequent franchise) wouldn’t have been necessary.

I’ve seen one or two of the more recent Friday the 13th movies, but it was interesting to see the first movie, which didn’t have a supernatural killer as such. However, I think the characters did behave in really stupid ways…and there was very little in the way of fighting back/resistance when the killer was striking. Plus, although there were some elements of foreshadowing throughout the movie as to how the killer was involved, there was no real mystery to solve about who was responsible for the murders.

On the whole, I felt it was worth seeing this movie and how the slasher horror genre has changed over the years. However, I wouldn’t watch it again…and I wouldn’t watch it at the cinema again. Unfortunately, the whole ‘remastering’ ended with a movie that was so ridiculously loud, it ended up hurting my ears before it was even a third of the way through.

It’s probably not too much of a surprise by this point that I went to see the new Exorcist movie at the cinema. I would have done so anyway, but I kept being hit over the head with advertising for it when I was watching YouTube videos. Funnily enough, after actually watching the movie at the cinema, I’ve not seen anymore trailers for it.

Unfortunately, this movie wasn’t anywhere like as good as it could have been. It did rip off a lot from the original, such as the scene with the fighting dogs…although that scene lacked the subtlety that I assume the first one was going for.

One thing I did like in this movie was the relationship between Angela and her father, Victor. Their interactions at the beginning made me smile…and I could empathise with Angela over being raised without a parent. Victor and Sorenne’s relationship at the beginning was shown to be really sweet, so Sorenne then dying was difficult to watch.

I would have liked to see a bit more of Katherine’s relationship with her family, along with her friendship with Angela before the girls decided to try and contact the ghost of Angela’s mother. Unfortunately, once that event occurred, I did feel that the movie went downhill.

I did watch the original The Exorcist before seeing this one…and there was a stark contrast between how this movie handled the horror and how the original handled it. While the first one moved gradually, this movie pretty much went all out right from the start…and I think that this movie did suffer from that. A lot of the horror scenes were predictable, ‘cheap’ horror scares (light turning on and girl suddenly appears in the bathroom), or shown in the trailer. And while it was nice to see a return of Chris from the original movie, this movie did seem to completely contradict her established character from the first movie.

I didn’t think this movie was a very good one. There were two girls possessed, but only one of them had been shown enough to form any kind of emotional attachment to her. Katherine wasn’t nearly as developed as Angela was. I had no idea why a girl brought up in a Christian family had decided to try and contact the ghost of her friend’s mother.

I will say that I liked the bringing together of people with differing beliefs and faiths. I kind of wish that had been explored a bit more, with the idea of all of them needing to play a part in the exorcism. Sadly, that wasn’t enough to raise this movie past ‘mediocre’ horror, at least in my eyes. I won’t be watching this movie again.

Another old movie I went to see at the cinema, thanks to Cineworld running a ‘month of horror’ in the buildup to Halloween.

Similar to The Exorcist, I hadn’t seen this movie before, but I knew about it – mostly thanks to the easily recognisable figure of Pinhead. What was kind of a surprise, at least to me, was that he and the rest of his gang (the Cenobites) didn’t appear until at least halfway through the movie.

The movie starts out fairly typically for a horror movie, with a man (Frank) purchasing a puzzle box that turns out to be a gateway to hell. After he solves the puzzle, he gets ripped apart and that’s the end of him…right?

Well, actually, not. Frank’s brother and sister-in-law (Larry and Julia) move into the same house where Frank solved the puzzle box. And in a scene that blows the whole idea of foreshadowing out of the window and makes a huge deal about what’s about to happen, Larry impales his hand on a nail…and his dripping blood somehow brings his brother back to some semblance of life. I say some semblance, because he’s basically only muscle and bone until Julia (who he had an affair with and somehow still finds him attractive) starts seducing men and bringing them back to the house…all so Frank can consume them and start growing the rest of his body back.

I have to say, throughout this movie, I felt a strong disconnect to most of the characters. Julia wasn’t a likable person to start with…and just got even worse as the movie went on. Frank was unlikable for obvious reasons. And Larry and his daughter, Kirsty, just weren’t interesting enough for me to care about. Kirsty just seemed like a damsel in distress most of the time, even when she was confronting the Cenobites and trying to ‘bargain’ with them. I did find the constant appearance of the homeless man who aeemed to be following her a suitably creepy aspect of the movie…particularly when he was in the pet shop and eating insects. That was actually a really good creepy scene without being over the top.

All told, this movie was good to watch. I found the Cenobites intriguing and would have liked a bit more detail about them. But I didn’t really think much of the main characters in the movie…and by the end, I thought Kirsty was making a lot of really stupid choices. Then again, it is an older horror movie, and many of the cliches of horror movies now come from the older horror movies.

Anyway, this movie was somewhat entertaining to watch, but I don’t think I’d gain anything from watching it a second time. I can’t really say I feel much interest in watching other movies in this franchise, either.

I’d actually not seen this movie before, even though I was aware of most of the plot, due to a lot of it being repeated and parodied in other movies/TV series.

I will say that I’ve noticed a pattern with ‘remastered’ old movies in that a lot of the sound is turned up to ridiculously high volumes. The scene right at the beginning of the movie, with the fighting dogs, was so loud, it was almost painful. Fortunately, it was only the scene right at the beginning that was actually physically painful.

I will say that this movie was very dated. I don’t mean in regards to special effects, though I imagine that what is tame and nearly boring now was really cutting edge at the time of the film’s initial release. No, it was very much dated with the attitudes towards women (locking them up in psychiatric hospitals) and medication (putting a child on medication and not using therapy as the first resort. In fact outright saying, ‘Let’s see how this medication does before we consider therapy’). This movie was definitely a product of its time and wouldn’t fly by today’s standards and progress.

Watching the movie for the first time, I can see why it became such an iconic horror. Unfortunately, I think a lot of that came from visual and audible shock value (a child using incredibly vulgar language and major desecration of churches/crucifixes), rather than powerful storytelling. I felt the movie did a lot of telling, rather than showing. For instance, the dream Karras has about his mother makes it clear that she died…and having Chris randomly told about the priest’s mother dying just spoiled the effects of that dream, which worked really well as a haunting visual.

One thing I did like about this movie was that, at least at first, it wasn’t clear whether Regan was actually possessed, or was suffering from some kind of mental illness. Of course, that ambiguity didn’t last for long…though my understanding is that the book kept it more of a mystery.

On the whole, I think I’m glad I did see the movie, as it is an iconic horror movie that I had missed out on watching for a long time. And considering that this movie was made long before special effects were really advanced, I think the movie did a good job with things like the demon’s face and voice. I found it really interesting to read about how the demon’s voice actually came about! However, I think that the movie focused more on shocking its audience and not on great storytelling…and I can’t really forgive movies using telling, rather than showing, in such an awful way. I don’t have any intentions of watching this movie again.

I don’t normally watch the Saw movies, due to having a strong dislike of mutiliation. While gory deaths are fine, what Saw does is…not like that. However, I watched Jigsaw, which I felt was cleverly done, so I decided to give this movie a try.

I don’t know a whole lot about the lore of the Saw movies, but I know this is a direct sequel to the first movie and a prequel to the others, due to the fact that John Kramer is still alive…even if that’s barely.

Compared to most horror movie villains, Kramer seems to have more a moral code…or at least rules he abides by. From what I know of the Saw franchise, he targets people who aren’t ‘good’, such as corrupt police officers, or murderers who escaped justice. And this movie was no exception, with Kramer targeting a group of fake ‘doctors’ who pretended to cure his cancer, but instead took his money and fled. And he wasn’t the first one they’d done this to. So, theoretically, Kramer was taking revenge on people who had targeted victims at their most vulnerable, the very worst kind of con artists.

With perhaps one exception, I didn’t really care about the people caught in Jigsaw’s traps. Sure, they kept on apologising…promising to return his money…desperately promising that there really was a cure. But there was no genuine remorse there; nothing to show that any of them, except perhaps one, deserved a chance to live.

The traps utilised in this movie were very much more gruesome than clever…and I didn’t really feel like the group was actually given true chances to survive. Kramer defended his own actions, saying that the injuries could be treated and that a damaged brain had even been proven to form new connections to keep on going. However, it was far more likely that trap would kill someone; if not by the person failing the trap, then by causing too much damage to their own brain by cutting out random pieces. And radiation poisoning is still going to cause death, but a slow and painful one…so in this movie, I felt strongly that Kramer had gone against his own moral code in that even if his victims survived the immediate, they’d still end up dying before their natural time.

I found it interesting to see that Amanda had some empathy for Gabriela. While I could agree to a certain extent with Kramer’s comments about everyone making their own choices, I also agree that they had no idea what had happened in Gabriela’s past to cause her to be addicted to drugs…or even if she was forced into that addiction. Out of all of the group Kramer kidnaps, Gabriela was the only one I felt actually deserved to live.

On the whole, this movie was an interesting addition to the Saw franchise, but I felt it was more about the shock and gore factor than about exploring more of the world and motivations of the main characters. I definitely feel like the rules and moral code were bent, if not outright broken, at times. If you’re a fan of the Saw franchise, you’d probably enjoy this movie. For me, I only watched Jigsaw and Spiral and this one – and so far, Jigsaw’s been the only one that engaged me enough to consider watching a second time.