Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 16 (Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers)

Boo.

Happy Halloween! I hope the ghosts and/or goblins are good to you and that many a child came to your door searching for the treats, which you will have provided of course. 'Cause you're good like that. I had a good few at the door, and possibly more now that the sun is down. Of course, the kids knocking were a welcome distraction, because it gave me a reprieve from engaging with GODDAMN FUCKING HALLOWEEN SIX THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. Perhaps I gave the game away a little early in this review, but oh my God. Oh my good God this is dire. It's been a long time coming, after going through this series in a strange order (and detouring for the David Gordon Green trilogy), but here we are. The end of the Jamie Lloyd trilogy. That which Halloween 5 was building up to with its strange glimpses of the man in a coat and hat. And it's shit. It's a complete and muddled clusterfuck fired on screen in 90 minutes, it killed whatever the hell these folks were planning, and only by the good graces of Wes Craven making Scream a year later and causing people to go "hey these slasher things sure are popular" did we get Halloween H20 from that. Let's go wild into this thing and what it does wrong.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 15 (28 Years Later)

It's another curious place I'm in here, as the astute among you will note I've not actually talked about anything from this series before. I know it by reputation, mostly by the fact that it bucked the usual zombie trend by having the zombies be able to run really fast at you to get you. Also not traditional undead zombies, but people infected by a plague. Kay. I knew all that going in, and didn't quite know what to expect. The result is a strange film, but one with a lot of artistic merit and thematic weight. I'm not sure if I get all of it, or if my read is correct, but as always I'm going to take a stab at it. Let's talk about some fast and spooky British zambabinos, I guess.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 14 (Anatomy)

 As we wind down here, let's branch out a bit from the cinema before the final push and talk about a spooky video game. Previously when I've done this sort of thing, it's been a focus on mainly retro titles like Splatterhouse or Sweet Home. Brief and short little experiences from the olden days of gaming that nonetheless tried to add the spooks and scares of horror cinema to the interactive medium. Anatomy is not one of those, but rather is an indie horror game from one Kitty Horrorshow, which you can purchase here for a couple of bucks. It's about an hour long and has some spooky atmosphere which I'm going to talk all over, so if you're interested then by all means check it out before I go into that. Which I will do, right about now.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 13 (Pearl)

It's been a strange road which has led me here to this motion picture, and it's all thanks to Scream. TO make a long story short, last year the two stars of the recent Scream pictures getting shitcanned because one said pro-Palestine things and the other protested her costar getting shitcanned. That led to me swearing off new Scream, but also doing a duo of films each starring those girls as my tribute in solidarity. Those films were Abigail with Melissa Barrera, and X with Jenna Ortega. Ignoring for the moment that X wasn't the best Ortega tribute because A) She's a supporting character and B) she doesn't make it through the film, it nevertheless remained a pretty good motion picture. I had a bunch to say about old age, sex, and the notion of sexhavers in horror movies when I covered it. What I didn't know then was that this was only half the story. That movie has a companion piece, which is what we're covering here today. I only had the vaguest memories of X, given that it was literally a year ago when I watched it. I recognized some of the geography from the prior movie, but went in with only the notion of "Mia Goth, who was in X, is now playing a young version of that creepy old bitch who killed everyone in X". I was not ready for what was about to transpire.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 12 (Godzilla Vs. Hedorah)

It wouldn't be a Halloween marathon without a little bit of kaiju posting. Having done a whole bunch of Heisei Gamera, and a whole bunch of the really stupendous Godzilla films, I didn't have any actual recommendations on where to go from there. So I went with this film, which I happened to have laying around. Oh. Oh my good God what in the fuck is happening here? Godzilla Vs. Hedorah is many strange and inscrutable things, all at once. It is a profoundly ambitious film, attempting to mash together dissonant styles and tones. It is a film with a ton of attempted meaning, wanting to make a claim on the effects of pollution circa the early 70's. It is a film that, at times, just gets weird as fuck. It is also a film with several jarring missteps that just crater the thing into the ground, over and over again. Within the last 30 minutes of the film I grew to hate it. I was feeling a deep-seated disappointment. I had to cool off, reconvene, talk to folks about it, and let that sludge settle and simmer. I no longer want to torpedo the film into the sun, and I admire that it had its heart in the right place... but holy fuck is this a goddamn mess. Let's dig into that.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 11 (Sinners)

Well, holy god damn. Every once in a while you come across a film that just floors you. Surprising nobody who read the previous two sentences, Sinners is the latest film to do that for me. Yet here I sit, baffled about what to say regarding it. It is at once vast and infinite in its intricacies and meanings, and also exactly what it says on the tin. There are angles I can come at the movie, but we have to deal with the main thing upfront: I'm white and this isn't my story or struggle. It's why I did not cover a movie like Get Out on this here marathon, despite it also being spectacular and having a lot to say. That aspect is hugely vital to Sinners, anyone can see it, and I have. I'm just putting the disclaimer here so you know that if I missed something, it's out of privilege and not malice. With that out of the way, let me try and do this film justice.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 10 (V/H/S 94)

Alright, here we go, another deadly dance with the found footage franchise. So far, me and the VHS series (I'm not typing it out with all those slashes in the post, deal with it) have had up and downs. The original VHS film was one I did not care for, being real sicknasty towards women with a particular cruelty and straight up just doing one as a goddamn Skype call in a haunted VHS tape movie. VHS 85, on the other hand, kinda ruled. A nice variety of segments, spooky and gross and intriguing, and a movie that did not overstay its welcome. This is a movie with Mexican death gods, technopaganism, and dreams about a serial killer recorded onto analog tape. It's kind of crazy but kind of fun. I was going to give the newest entry, VHS Halloween, this slot. Unfortunately that one is getting sort of mixed reviews, so maybe another year. For now, we picked VHS 94. How is it? It's pretty good. Not quite as good as 85, but nowhere near as dire as the original. Let's talk about it a bit.