Kat Takes: The Movie Blog

I'd only seen the John Carpenter movie, which is great although not my very favorite of his (maybe slightly too slow burn). The alien's MO is so different it didn't even feel like a remake. Interesting how this and Invasion of the Body Snatchers have plant-like aliens. This is snappier than the remake but also more superficial of course, like it's not explained how they suddenly have so much info after only seeing the alien for a minute. At first, I was worried it would be hard to tell the male characters apart bc some look similar and it's black and white, but luckily the main ones are different enough. Unlike the remake, this movie also has female characters. Realistically, one of them suggests how to stop the alien and is never credited for the rest of the movie. Spoiler alert, both movies have sled dogs dying 😞

I saw the forgettable trash remake of this as a teenager and I'm glad I forgot it. Even though I'm so into horror movies, I've barely seen any Romero ones, especially bc Night of the Living Dead isn't available on streaming. This is fun classic chaos. I hadn't seen anything with slow zombies in ages, and the fact that people have to die rather than just being bitten feels fresh even though it's obviously old. The bad makeup and effects are charming now, especially the neon blood. You can see where many of the classic tropes come from, like not just the shopping mall but also the fact that the true danger comes from other people instead of zombies. I like how the zombies work through sheer mass rather than each individual of them being like a predator.

I can't remember whether I saw this sequel as a kid or not. It's a crazy fever dream where people obviously took a million different scenarios and thought what if this, but gremlins? In a fun way! It does somehow still have a plot that works through all the crazy. The meta scenes where they talk about the movie itself as a movie are mildly annoying but sort of just of that time. Cute and crazy, holds up well (except that Daniel Clamp would be more evil IRL).

I had no huge expectations for this, but it's surprisingly satisfying. It's not Scream, but it doesn't have to be. Just a fun little whodunnit with a small cast but still some decent red herrings. Although I guessed who the killer was early on, it could just as easily have been one of the othe suspects. The reveal scene could've been better, but that's often the weak point in this kind of movie. Good high school characters with relationship drama and some cute little horror inside jokes like "Be right back... ooops I shouldn't have said that" rather than like hilarious comedy. There are no real scares but it's not really that kind of horror. Just fun if you're in the mood for a cozy mystery like if Miss Marple was a gay teenager in The Dead Zone.

This one isn't terrible or anything, but it was disappointing because I expected more. For one thing, why trot out the same medieval European woodcuts as in so many other horror movies? Djinns aren't even from Europe originally, so it would've been nice to see a different origin for a change. I liked the conceit of the djinn appearing as dead people but being itself in mirrors -- much better than showing its true form all the time. There's not much buildup of tension overall. The apparitions come one after the other with a break in between so it feels more like A Christmas Carol than building up to a showdown. The monkey's-paw catch at the ending works well, and the acting is good, especially with a child actor carrying the whole movie. Honestly I've not yet seen good djinn horror (shoutout to how bad Wishmaster is!).

This was a classic I kept hearing about and hadn't seen yet. It's on a lot of lists of best haunted-house horror (always looking for that!) but honestly it's largely a mystery setup, despite the supernatural stuff. Interesting camera angles, etc. panning through the rooms, you can tell it influenced a lot of later horror. From the plotline, you'd expect it to be grief horror like that kind that's been trending for a few years, but it doesn't have that "the real horror is grief" vibe. Fun watch.

I expected this to be more sci-fi/action and instead it's very mindfuck. Interesting and good worldbuilding. I thought it was a shame they forced an extra and predictable twist at the very end, when there had already been a clever twist before that in the lighthouse.

Nice aesthetic that starts with the title font. It's funny because I was saying before watching this that every werewolf movie has the same plot, like there are some mysterious brutal killings, someone says it's a werewolf, and everyone else is like, no it can't be, until they see that it is. So this was refreshingly different. Good characters and small-town snowy setting. The pacing was slightly too fast, which I almost never say, but it's ultimately kind of a whodunnit where you're not given enough time with the suspects, so that makes the reveal less satisfying. Still a fun watch, though.

I can see what the hype was about here because it feels very different from many other horror movies. I expected it to be scarier (also bc of hype) but it feels more like a mystery or kind of a head-fuck structure like Memento. The characters are richly fleshed out, like many who are victims and bad people in a variety of ways. It's definitely creepy and surprises you by the lateish reveal of what kind of horror it actually is. There are a few well-built jump scares, like when "Matthew" is in bed and turns around or with Gladys in the cellar. I did wonder what the clown faces had to do with anything. They're creepy but seemed unrelated once you know what the horror is? The way the victims behaved at the end reminded me of in It when people have seen the deadlights (as an aside, there's only one Pennywise for me and it's Tim Curry). The scene with the floating gun felt overly literal to me, to the point I wondered if suddenly the movie was gonna be like gotch...

This movie is so farfetched and bad it makes you curious what the backstory is about making it and getting Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger to be in it. It's probably the worst AS role, and I've seen a lot lately (Mr. Freeze actually aged really well). All the Chinese and Russian characters are dubbed, there's weird greenish CGI backdrops and a whole plotline about someone usurping Peter the Great's throne that's abandoned and never picked up again in favor of a dragon whose eyelashes are tea being replaced by an evil mechanical dragon (whose eyelashes aren't tea). I guess I enjoyed watching it but definitely laughing at, not with.

Oddity is actually way less bizarre than the images and preview make it seem. More of a mystery-suspense feel than horror. I did guess the main twist a few minutes into the movie, but that doesn't really take away from it. Carolyn Bracken is great as very different twins -- I would've thought she was two different people. It's very tightly written with pretty much everything being a Chekhov's pistol but I felt it could have had slightly more, maybe from the supernatural angle. Which is rare for me because I find so many movies could've been pared down. But yeah, I understand why this got great reviews. The golem or whatever it is is also well-designed, not one of those cringey horror effects that looks like bad animatronics.

The title sounds so stupid and basic it automatically undersells itself. This one is actually entertaining and not one of those friend-group ones where you're waiting for some of them to die because you can't tell them apart, i.e. there's actually some character development here. It's sort of a whodunnit and twistier than you might think at first. Not movie of the year but like a solid fun thing to watch in spooky season.