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In case you haven’t seen the intro from my entry dated
1/26/19 (it’s in my archives whenever you want to read it), I’m no longer going
to review every single movie I see. I’m
going to review one, with the occasional bonus, and just give ratings for the
rest from now on (unless I decide to pick it up again in the future). You can always ask me why I gave the ratings
for the films without reviews though (via comments or the e-mail addresses
under the ‘About Me’ section).
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Nightmare Cinema G
Pretty good horror anthology film consisting of five tales
presented as movies in a theater, all helmed by directors behind genre
titles: Alejandro Brugués (Juan of the Dead), Joe Dante (Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins, The ‘Burbs), Ryũhei Kitamura (Versus, The Midnight Meat Train), David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night),
and Mick Garris (Sleepwalkers, The Stand, Riding the Bullet). As I’ve
said before, anthology films can either have more hits than misses, more misses
than hits, mostly hits, mostly misses, all hits, or all misses. This one definitely had more hits; I liked 4
of the 5 and I didn’t hate the one, I just thought it was the weakest. It begins with a bang in Alejandro’s “The
Thing in the Woods” and I almost want to recommend the film on this entry
alone. It starts like a typical slasher
film in the woods before becoming something else entirely after a clever twist
is revealed. The aforementioned weakest
entry follows and is Mr. Dante’s “Mirare,” involving plastic surgery gone haywire. It wasn’t a terrible segment; there was just
no satisfying payoff. Mr. Kitamura’s
“Mashit” is a pretty good tale involving religion and the titular demon and contains a fairly gory finale. David Slade’s “This Way to Egress” is a
largely original Twilight Zone-ish
story but slightly darker and actually might benefit from being longer (it was ironically
shot in black & white like that Rod Serling anthology show too). The final tale directed by Mick Garris
(“Dead”) is slightly akin to The Sixth
Sense, but that doesn’t mean it still didn’t possess an eerie quality to
it, nor make it any less compelling (and I’m absolutely not dissing that M.
Night Shyamalan film either, but the whole “I see dead people” trope has been
done to death---pun intended). All in
all, this isn’t a superb anthology film (the first segment was great, the
second not great, and the last three were decent), but it’s definitely worth
checking out and not a waste of time (the DVD was a little under $10 at Walmart
and On Demand has it for $5.99). I could
see this becoming a franchise…well, any anthology movie has the potential to
become a franchise since it’s generally short films with no relation to each
other, but The Projectionist (played by Mickey Rourke) whom stores these
“movies” in his collection could potentially become iconic. 9/8/2019
Bonus review:
Slice OK/G
This film is a mystery with elements of horror, crime, and
comedy tossed in (the comedy came through quite a bit though, often
satirically). It takes place in a town
where the living and dead are segregated.
Yes, there is a literal “ghost town,” but the ghosts look more like
zombies (they’re both technically undead though). There are also witches and a werewolf. There’s quite a bit to enjoy here, especially
for well-versed film fans (horror in particular), but even amongst all the
genre intermingling and everything else going on, I still felt a part of the
story was missing, but that could just be me.
9/8/2019
Other
movies I've seen and their ratings (see above):
Clownado >>>B
Gags the Clown >>>OK/G
Giant Little Ones >>>G
Satanic Panic (2019) >>>EH/OK
The Utah Cabin
Murders >>>EH/OK
---Sean O.
9/9/2019
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