Trailer of the Day: The Conjuring

A friend of mine described this movie as follows:

"Not only is it a generic haunted house movie, but it's SO generic that it must be the template which all haunted house movies come from."

While I think he's pretty much dead on, I wasn't as down on it as he was. It has a couple good scares but it's still just too predictable. If you've seen a haunted house or possession movie, then you've seen this. In fact I feel like there are too many parts where it primes you for a scare then nothing happens.

On a side note, I'm amused that the trailer states: "It's not a haunting. It's not a possession". SPOILER ALERT, it's actually both! I guess since they've already shown pretty much every scare in the trailers they figured that they had to do something to draw people in. Why not just pretend the movie still has surprises!

*SIGH*

P.S. While looking up this trailer on you tube, I found this German trailer for Ghost Movie.



I don't know why, but I find this really funny. Marlon Wayans German dub is especially ridiculous.

Trailer of the Day: The Masque of The Red Death

When the trailer for a move starts off with "AN ORGY OF SAVAGE LUSTS", you assume that the movie is gonna be preeeeeeetttttttty entertaining. You would be wrong.

I had been putting off watching any of the old Rodger Corman adaptations of Edgar Alan Poe stories. Even though I'm somewhat fond of Corman and pretty much love Vincent Price, I had always suspected that these films were going to be awful. Looks like I was right, at least for this one.

Maybe awful is a little unfair, it's a sound film, it just moves at a snails pace.. An "AN ORGY OF SAVAGE LUSTS" it is not. Maybe I'm being a little unfair to Corman too. When it was made it was probably pretty compelling, but it doesn't really hold up to the test of time. I do give him credit for sticking fairly close to the original stories that the movie is adapted from. So maybe the problem is more that Poe's stories don't hold up as well.

Oh well, at least the trailer is entertaining...

Trailer of the Day: The Gravedancers

The first year they did the After Dark horror fest thingy, my roommate and I went to check it out. We were only able to see one movie and choose The Abandoned, which was great, but horribly depressing and made us regret not seeing The Gravedancers, which a friend of ours said she heard was great.

She was grossly misinformed.

While not being Ghosts of Mars level boring, it was still pretty bland. The main problem I had with it is that it doesn't know if it wants to be a creepy ghost story or a freaky monster movie. There's a little creeping suspense in the beginning, but once weird (but not scary) looking ghosts show up and start tossing people around it kind of destroys the tension. But hey, it was good enough to keep half my attention while I did other stuff, so I guess that's something...

Trailer of the Day: The Ward

*SIGH*

I really wanted to think of something witty to start things with but every time I start to think about The Ward I...*sigh*...

Look Carpenter, you've had some really great movies. Most of your work is pretty entertaining, even the bad stuff (with maybe some small exceptions). You know how to make a scary movie and when you're not doing scary you know how to make it campy and fun. This movie, however, was not scary or campy or even fun. What it was, is boring and predictable.

If you've seen a few horror movies, then you will probably guess the "big twist" pretty easily. That would be forgivable if the rest of the movie wasn't bland and lifeless. Lets fill a movie with unlikable characters and then show the unfrightening "monster" a bunch. This is not a good idea.

I was really hoping for something great, I really was, and maybe if it was someone different behind the camera I be a little more forgiving, but lets face it Carpenter, we expect more from the master.

Review: Paranormal Activity

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I don't know if anybody out there has seen this....

...but it looks pretty scary. From what i've heard it was made in 2007 but Dreamworks bought it out before it was released intending to make a big budget remake. I guess no one liked that idea because the original version is finally going to theaters (select cities only).

Looks pretty freakin creepy, like Blair Witch Project in a house with ghosts instead of....ummmm...witches.....