Halloween Horror Marathon 2021

[Monterey Jack]

Damien: Omen II (8/10)

Personally, I consider this the best of the trilogy. The original film -- while often visually striking -- wasn't much more than a series of gruesome deaths.

LIke the sequel isn't? That was one of the earliest examples I can think of when a sequel was obviously written around setpieces first, and the narrative connective tissue between was of secondary consideration. I like Damien: Omen II, but that's a weird complaint to make about the original.

[esteban miranda]

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) - 6/10

Viewing this again (after 10 years), it's not really what I would call a horror movie, more of a suspense/thriller, the bizarre, nightmarish sets and (in the 1997 release by Image) Timothy Brock's score in early 20th century German expressionist style being the prominent "horror" elements.
After a slow start the story picks up, becoming an off-kilter mystery with murders that are pretty incidental to the plot.
How much the viewer "gets into" the story may depend on how familiar/accepting one is with the often pantomime-like acting style of the time.

[mkaroly]

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) - 6/10

Viewing this again (after 10 years), it's not really what I would call a horror movie, more of a suspense/thriller, the bizarre, nightmarish sets and (in the 1997 release by Image) Timothy Brock's score in early 20th century German expressionist style being the prominent "horror" elements.
After a slow start the story picks up, becoming an off-kilter mystery with murders that are pretty incidental to the plot.
How much the viewer "gets into" the story may depend on how familiar/accepting one is with the often pantomime-like acting style of the time.

I really enjoy that film from the silent era. I love the twist ending too...I had not seen it for a long time and had forgotten how it ended, so it was a surprise to me (again). Great film as is FW Murnau's NOSFERATU (which I hope to watch this weekend so I can provide a review for MJ's thread).

[Monterey Jack]

Mind over matter...

-The Fury (1978): 8.5/10

-Scanners (1981): 8/10





Two psychically-linked tales of telekinesis run amok today. In 1978's The Fury, Kirk Douglas plays Peter Sandza, whose teenage son Robin (Andrew Stevens is whisked away by a sinister, covert arm of the government ("We don't spend a dime on public relations") lead by his traitorous old CIA buddy Childress (a marvellously oily John Cassavetes). Seems they want the boy's latent psychic abilities working for Uncle Sam, whether he wants to lend them willingly or not, causing Peter to recruit the talents of a teenage girl named Gillian Bellaver (beautiful Amy Irving), who has psychic abilities similar to Robin's that can hopefully lead Peter to his whereabouts.

Believe me, that threadbare plot description is just the tip of the iceberg in this sprawling mixture of 70s conspiracy thriller, X-Men comic (Gillian's ability to make those near her bleed -- sometimes spouting like a fountain -- recalls the "look, but don't touch" curse that afflicts Rogue, even though this film actually precedes Rogue's first appearance in the Marvel comics by about three years), proto-Stranger Things and director Brian De Palma's previous tale of a psychic teen pushed too far, Carrie. Adapted from his own novel by John Farris, The Fury is unwieldy, has a tone that ranges from bloodbath gore to broad comedy, and, frankly, sometimes doesn't fully make sense. Yet it's a movie positively drunk on ways to generate and explosively release tension, with De Palma (working with big studio money for the first time, here provided by 20th Century Fox) coming up with an endless variety of ways to inventively off people. He's really shooting the works here, with a fiendish kid-in-a-candy-store glee, and backed by a superb production team (editor Paul Hirsch, cinematographer Richard H. Kline, and -- especially -- composer John WIlliams, providing a richly sinister score that's amongst his best), he concocts some of his most nimble and creative setpieces, with trademark use of such favored devices as slow motion and deep-focus shots. Just as an excuse to stack one sequence of voluptuous violence on top of each other, The Fury is one of the director's most sheerly fun exercises in feverish suspense. Look fast for James Belushi as an extra, and early appearances by Daryl Hannah and De Palma favorite Dennis Franz.

MIning similar territory is David Cronenberg's Scanners, about a new breed of psychics that have begun to crop up in the gene pool, ones that can not only read minds, but cause them to boil in one's skull until it erupts like a watermelon at a Gallagher performance. A scientist named Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) enlists the services of one such "Scanner", a homeless man named Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), in order to infiltrate the Scanner underground and locate their apparent ringleader, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), but Cameron's descent into the Scanner subculture reveals a vast conspiracy, one that seems to be setting up the next stage of human evolution.

Cronenberg, in the midst of his early "body horror" phase, directs with his usual mixture of icy cerebralism and creative gore, and while Lack's leading performance is, to put it mildly, lacking, Ironside's charismatic turn as the Scanner ringleader makes up for it, especially during a spectacular mind-meld climax with gooey, top-notch makeup effects supervised by the great Dick Smith (and with contributions by Chris Walas, who would win an Oscar for Cronenberg's The Fly five years later). Scanners isn't the best of Cronenberg's work, but it's entered the horror movie panteon by being the source of one of the most memorable animated GIFs of all time.

-Trilogy Of Terror (1975): 7/10



Mid-70s television movie taken from the short fiction of famed sci-fi/horror author Richard Matheson tells a triptych of terror tales, all starring Karen Black. In "Julie", she plays a college professor who has a student (Robert Burton) who takes a crush too far, leading to a relationship of mutual manipulation. In "Millicent & Therese", Black plays sisters, the prim, disapproving Millicent and the flamboyant, flirty Therese, whose conflicting personalities lead to a twist ending you'll see coming from ten miles away. And in "Amelia", she plays a young woman who breaks a dinner date with her mother, only to get pursued through her high rise apartment by a nasty, jabbering l'il Zuni fetish doll, armed with a spear, a butcher knife, and rows of needle-sharp teeth.

Produced and directed by Dan Curtis (the creator of TV's Dark Shadows), Trilogy Of Terror is a sandwich where you'll want to throw the meat away and just enjoy the bread. Segment one is pretty solid, the second is wearying obvious, and the third is a mini-masterpiece of tension (and a clear inspiration for Child's Play).

[Paul MacLean]

Damien: Omen II (8/10)

Personally, I consider this the best of the trilogy. The original film -- while often visually striking -- wasn't much more than a series of gruesome deaths.

LIke the sequel isn't? That was one of the earliest examples I can think of when a sequel was obviously written around setpieces first, and the narrative connective tissue between was of secondary consideration. I like Damien: Omen II, but that's a weird complaint to make about the original.

I fail to see what is "laughable" about my observation.

Whether the set pieces were thought-up first or not is immaterial. It's the finished script that matters.

As I said, the second film is much more of a character study -- with stronger character development -- which gives it a level of introspection missing from the original Omen (which was pretty-much just people dying).

[AndyDursin]

I totally get where Paul is coming from on DAMIEN OMEN II.

I think the first movie is better directed and more effectively shot -- but after an initial viewing, THE OMEN to me is just a one-trick pony. Damien's not an interesting character because he's just a little kid. The movie is just a group of "shock sequences" that riffs on a theme -- that this little kid is the son of Satan -- with slickly designed murders and such. But it's just superficial to me -- the characters really aren't well developed, Peck is slumming, even Jerry's score is the least interesting (by far) of his three scores for the series. It was unique and innovative for its time, but its mix of "creepy choral music" and this plaintive, quasi-lyrical theme for Damien comes off as (dare I say it) a little shlocky. By contrast -- Goldsmith wrote some much more thematically compelling music for the sequels, which is why I like listening to those scores a lot more.

DAMIEN OMEN II comes off as a formula sequel, but I think that's because Harvey Bernhard bungled his chance to do something really interesting there. Mike Hodges was going to make something more intricate, more suspenseful but Bernhard just cared about the bottom line and fired him because he was taking too long. All of the cast interviews on the Shout Blu-Ray lament Hodges' firing -- because Don Taylor was really just a hack who was there to get the movie done, on time and under budget, with as minimal fuss as possible.

I agree with Paul there's more dramatic stakes in DAMIEN OMEN II because Damien is more interesting -- his relationship with "the American Thorns," the material involving his cousin...those are effective scenes. Having the Lee Grant character be part of his "coven" so to speak -- also effective. So there's a kernel of development there that the original OMEN lacks.

Ultimately I think the movie needed MORE of that -- and it missed its chance, which Hodges apparently was going to bring to the table -- but I still like revisiting it more than THE OMEN itself. Even if I think THE OMEN is a "better made movie," I don't think it has a whole lot to offer on repeat viewing. And THE FINAL CONFLICT has some hugely fatal flaws, regrettably, that makes it the least of the trilogy -- yet I like how it's shot and I love Goldsmith's score.

It's too bad Bernhard wasn't very good at finding capable directors on II and III because someone with a "vision" -- and there were plenty of candidates to choose from back then -- really could've done something special with the Omen sequels.

[Monterey Jack]

'Bust a move...!

-Ghostbusters (1984): 10/10

-Ghostbusters II (1989): 7/10

-Ghostbusters: Answer The Call (2016): 7/10







With another rebootquel hitting theaters in about a month, it's about time to revisit the highest-grossing film of 1984, and its pair of imperfect -- yet enjoyable -- follow-ups. Ghostbusters is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle pop phenomenons that come along rarely, but are to be treasured when they occur. A freakishly funny crossbreeding of paranormal thriller and SNL skit writ large, it stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and the late Harold Ramis (the latter two of whom co-scripted) as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler, a troika of paranormal investigators who get ejected from their local university for their lackadaisical manner and lack of evidence of the supernatural. Bereft of funds, they mortgage Ray's house ("My parents left me that house...!") and use the money to fund their own unique brand of ghost elimination services. After a rocky start, they're soon the toast of New York City (Ernie Hudson joins the group as WInston Zeddemore, a new 'busting recruit who's willing to believe in anything, so long as it means a steady paycheck). but when a frightened woman, Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), comes to them after witnessing unnatural phenomenon in her high-rise apartment, the Ghostbusters are put to the ultimate test, in an attempt to repel the advance of a powerful demon into out plane of existence and save the entire city.

Directed by Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters is a near-miraculous mixture of state-of-the-art F/X (at least, for the era) and improvisatory comic asides. This is one of those comedies where any random line you could mention could easily be emblazoned upon a T-shirt, and would get a laugh from any random person you passed on the street. With a terrific soundtrack (including Ray Parker, Jr.'s immortal, Oscar-winning title tune and Elmer Bernstein's excellent score, which plays up the film's supernatural elements with amusingly portentous seriousness), and tremendous comic chemistry amongst the cast (Rick Moranis is a hoot as Dana's hopelessly nerdy neighbor, Louis Tully, Annie Potts offers bone-dry asides as the Ghostbusters' put-upon secretary, Janine Melnitz), it's one of the top comedies of the 80s, and one of the few examples of a movie that mixes mirth and big-budget special effects and gets the consistency just right.

This being the 80s, and considering the film's mammoth success, a sequel was a forgone conclusion, but who knew it would take half-a-decade to realize? 1989's belated Ghostbusters II suffers not only from feeling late to its own pop culture afterparty, but from the flaws that dog the majority of sequels to unexpected hit comedies. There's a reason why someone will usually preface relating a funny joke to you with the phrase, "Stop me if you've heard this one", and that's because it's tedious sitting through a protracted set-up when you already know the punchline.

Oh, Ghostbusters II has plenty to recommend it...the returning cast settles back into their characters with lived-in ease, the F/X remain fun, and the film coasts by on the pleasures of seeing these actors riff of of each other. That said, the plot is basically one of those sequels deals where the characters are reset at zero just so we can see them enact the same basic plot arc as the original (the Ghostbusters, left financially ruined after getting sued by the majority of New York and left as pariahs with their work considered an elaborate hoax, have to get back in the groove to take on another ancient evil housed inside of a old painting as well as a river of "Mood Slime" flowing underneath the city, feeding off the bad vibes let off by the populace), and while consistently amusing, with some choice lines, the film never generates the levels of hilarity of the original. it's a solid, commendable effort at reinventing the wheel, but it's never more than solid. Certainly far from the worst when it comes to comedy sequels, but it could -- and should -- have been better considering how long it took to materialize.

Now, here's where my Geek and Man Cards get revoked for all time...I authentically like the much-despised 2016 remake Ghostbusters (with the only-in-the-end-credits subtitle Answer The Call). Pretty much ground zero for the era of Toxic Fandom that would soon bubble up and flood the Earth (or at least Twitter), the '16 Ghostbusters had the unmitigated GALL to feature a leading casts consisting entirely of -- gasp! -- women, and for the majority of 'Buster fandom, this was the equivalent of taking a dump on an icon. I've liked this movie from day one, however, as it collects a quartet of talented funny femmes (Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and a scene-stealing Kate McKinnon) together to reenact the same basic plot ideas from the original (shunned paranormal investigators band together to catch ghosts and prove existence of the supernatural, get famous, have to save the city from evil, yadda-yadda), yet do it with a similarly feisty comic spark as its pair of predecessors.

Like Ghostbusters II , it's never really hilarious, mainly floating by on a series of giggles and chuckles (although I love McKinnon's offhanded description of a can of Pringles as "Salty parabolas"), yet the cast have great chemistry, the F/X are fun and inventive (I liked the haunted parade balloons), and Theodore Shapiro's score is an improvement on Randy Edelman's mediocre soundtrack to the second film. the movie is a bit long and unfocused, and a little of Chris Hemsworth's schtick as the Ghostbusters' studiously eccentric male secretary goes a long way. Still, I still find the movie amusing and underrated, and it's a shame that this cast never got a chance to hone their skills in a sequel.

-Black Sunday (1960): 7/10



Atmospheric tale of a witch/vampire (Barbara Steele) buried in unconsecrated ground in 1630 while swearing vengeance on her brother's treachery, and how, two centuries later, her disinterred corpse calls out from the grave in an attempt to claim the body of a young woman (Steele again) in order that she might live again.

Directed and photographed by Mario Bava, Black Sunday is crisply eerie and fairly explicit in its violence for the day, and boasts a couple of impressive in-camera transformation shots.

[esteban miranda]

The Haunting (1963) - 4/10

I was pretty underwhelmed when I first saw this years ago and it has not improved since.
The film makers attempt to generate some scares almost succeed (once), otherwise it's just a mentally disturbed woman in a creaky old house.
Maybe it's just too subtle for me.

[AndyDursin]

Agreed -- it's overrated for me also.

[esteban miranda]

The Mummy (1999) - 5/10
The Mummy Returns (2001) - 5/10
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) - 5/10

I had seen this Mummy around 20 years ago on home video but it didn't make much of an impression at that time. I can't say what prompted the notion but I decided to give all three a try last week.
None of them are what I would consider "horror" movies, no more so that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the plots are more akin to a Doc Savage or Shadow novel.
Each is for the most part harmless and pretty forgettable, in fact...

[BobaMike]

I'd give the first Mummy a much better rating than a 5/10- I'd say 7/10. It's pretty scary in some parts- I remember my girlfriend at the time being terrified. It's not a pure horror movie- more horror/adventure. And I think it's better than the last Indiana Jones movie! It has a lot of fun scenes, the FX are good, and one of Goldsmith's last really good scores.

I was sad when I read Goldsmith hated the film and Silvestri's score for the second was a bit of a step down.

[esteban miranda]

I'd give the first Mummy a much better rating than a 5/10- I'd say 7/10. It's pretty scary in some parts- I remember my girlfriend at the time being terrified. It's not a pure horror movie- more horror/adventure. And I think it's better than the last Indiana Jones movie! It has a lot of fun scenes, the FX are good, and one of Goldsmith's last really good scores.

I was sad when I read Goldsmith hated the film and Silvestri's score for the second was a bit of a step down.

The Mummy score is definitely the best part of the film. I think Silvestri's Mummy Returns score comes off better on screen than on CD (at least it had more impact on me there, but I have not listened to the CD in some years).

[Monterey Jack]

Happy-Happy, Joy-Joy...!

-The VVitch (2016): 8/10

-Last Night In Soho (2021): 10/10





With her willowy frame and disconcertingly large, round eyes, Anya Taylor-Joy makes for an arrestingly alien screen presence, as well as ideal casting for a horror movie (she kind of looks like she stepped out of the pages of a Tim Burton sketchbook). Today's twofer looks back at her big screen debut and her latest, currently unspooling in theaters just in time for Halloween treats.

2016's The VVitch features Joy as Thomasin, eldest daughter of a puritan family, banished from their village due to a stubbornly prideful religious debate. With her father, William (Ralph Ineson), mother, Katherine (Kate Dickie), younger brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), the twins, Jonas and Mercy (Lucas Dawson, Ellie Grainger) and newborn Samuel, they eke out a hardscrabble existence in the New England wilds of 1630, managing to construct a humble farm to tend to their needs. But when baby Samuel vanishes -- stolen away literally from under Thomasins nose whilst playing peek-a-boo -- it's just the spark that ignites the mounting flames of religious hysteria, with the disappearance blamed on a witch living in the nearby woods and Thomasin accused of being in thrall to Satan's power.

Writer/director Robert Eggers takes this tale of Salem-era finger-pointing and crafts a film of ravishing, painterly beauty, even in the deepest pits of its human ugliness. Taylor-Joy delivers a star-making turn, perfectly tuning her performance between disbelief that her own family could turn against her and a swelling sense of the toxic allure of giving into her basest, unholy desires, and the rest of the cast impresses in their ability to gradually accelerate their levels of fear and suspicion. The old-timey Thee & Thou dialect can be a bit tough to suss through (it doesn't help that a lot of it is delivered in gravelly whispers), so some might want to keep their finger poised over the subtitle button on their remotes, but it's a minor flaw in an otherwise eerie and atmospheric tale of backwoods madness.

2021's Last Night In Soho is a much different bird, a heady, engrossing mind-meld of a thriller that stars Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise Turner, a young woman -- obsessed with the clothes, music and overall vibe of the 1960s as handed down to her by her late mother -- who travels to London to study the art of fashion, but becomes whipped up in a mystery from the past. Seems like whenever she goes to sleep, she's haunted by vividly realistic dreams, where she observes -- occasionally becomes -- a party girl named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) with aspirations to become a famed lounge singer in the swingin' era of go-go boots and Sean Connery 007 movies. Her dream life and waking life become harder and harder to differentiate (right down to Eloise chopping and dying her hair into a facsimile of Sandie's blonde beehive coif), and Eloise falls down a rabbit hole of nightmarish nostalgia leading into a violent catharsis in both the past and present.

Director Edgar Wright (sharing screenwriting credit with Krysty Wilson-Cairns) -- one of our slyest, pre-eminent genre mixmasters -- presents this increasingly lurid and surreal tale with his customary sense of rhythmic style. His camera glides through lusciously-detailed recreations of mid-60s London nightclubs and seedy back alleys as the soundtrack thumps with meticulously-chosen period song cuts, and the crosscutting between eras (courtesy of Wright regular Paul Machliss) keeps the audience in a constant state of snapping puzzle pieces into place. I suspect a lot of people won't "get" this movie the way that didn't get Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World over a decade ago, but like that film, Last Night In Soho is destined to be a cult favorite that its fans (count me in) will find more to enjoy with each viewing, and even after just one, I'm already head-over-heels for it. It's bloody brilliant...!

-Cloverfield (2008): 8/10



One of the better uses of the "found footage" gimmick in horror films, 2008's Cloverfield asks the question, what would it really be like to be one of those terrified members of the populace scattering for cover between the feet of a giant monster in an old Godzilla movie? A group of twentysomething New Yorkers have a going-away party for a friend interrupted by a massive power loss and inexplicable explosion. Soon, the city finds itself under siege from a gigantic reptilian creature who emerges from the bay (it swats the head off the Statue Of Liberty...hey, just spray some Mood Slime on it, and she'll be fine), who reduces the city to rubble as our core group of survivors (including Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, Michael Stahl-David and T.J. Miller) have to forge their away across the city in order to save Stahl-David's ex-girlfriend (Odette Yustman).

Directed by Matt Reeves, Cloverfield has some of the usual flaws of the FF genre (like characters who keep suicidally filming no matter what immediate physical peril they might be in), but it's also terse, exciting and boasts some marvelously enveloping sound design (hell, I got a noise complaint from a neighbor while watching the UHD today). It's not deep, it doesn't reinvent the wheel, but Cloverfield is great Giant Monster fun taken from a unique perspective.

-Blood Fest (2018): 5/10



Robby Kay stars as Dax Conway, a young man -- obsessed with horror cinema -- who's dying to get into Blood Fest, a horror fan gathering that spreads across multiple acres of fenced-in land, replete with themed sections (zombies, slashers, creepy clowns, etc.). But after the gates lock, he -- and everyone else -- finds themselves dying to get out, as the sanguinary shindig's master of ceremonies, Anthony Walsh (Owen Egerton, who also wrote and directed), lets them know, in no uncertain terms, that his crew of hired goons is going to kill each and every one of them, and use the footage of the fanboy carnage to create the ULTIMATE horror movie.

This is a nifty concept for a horror movie, especially considering how nerdy fan expos are the lifeblood of the seasoned horror fan, but Blood Fest is a terminally mild experience, with the gore being rote and the comedy falling prey to the usual fallacy that referring to cliches and stock situations excuses a filmmaker from filling a movie with cliches and stock situations. Had the film been funner or scarier, this wouldn't be a fatal flaw. It's a painless-enough way to pass ninety minutes, but seasoned fright fans will not find anything to really recommend here.

[esteban miranda]

The Night Stalker (1972) - 7/10
The Night Strangler (1973) - 7/10

Part of my regard for these titles may be nostalgia. I liked them when they were first shown on TV and have seen them several times since on TV and home video. This time I watched the Kino Blu-rays which look perfectly fine to me on my 75" TV.
Good examples of 70s suspense (Robert Cobert's scores are an asset) with some good natured humor thrown in (and Carol Lynley is always enjoyable).
Richard Matheson's scripts are well done, only the tail end of the Strangler is a little weak (it probably should have been kept to 75 minutes like its predecessor).
After these, the Night Stalker TV series, which I like okay, was a let-down overall (or a missed opportunity?), but I don't think the same quality could have been maintained on a weekly basis.

[Monterey Jack]

GDT Presents...



-Splice (2010): 8/10

-Antlers (2021): 7.5/10

-Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (2019): 7/10







One thing I've always appreciated about filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro is that, when his name is attached to a movie in a producing or screenwriting capacity, the resulting film will, in many ways, echo the particular quirks of the movies he directs himself. There's never the sense that he's slapping his name on an inferior product because they drove a dump truck full of money up to his house (to quote The Simpsons). Think of all of the awful movies "presented" by the likes of Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino, where it's obvious they cashed a big check for nothing more than the marquee appeal of their names. Today's triple feature is a good example of the variety of intriguing projects Del Toro has shepherded through to theaters, often working with talented filmmakers in their own rights.

2010's Splice is a tidy exercise in Science Run Amok, with Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as Clive and Elsa, married scientists working on creating a new organism, one from which they can extract valuable enzymes that can cure a variety of human frailties. Faced with a series of embarrassing setbacks, Polley surreptitiously injects human DNA into their latest test subject, which evolves from an awfully phallic larval state into a bald, bipedal humanoid toddler (Abigail Chu) that has a tail with a nasty l'il stinger at the tip and lacks the rudiments of human speech (it emits a series of inquisitive, birdlike chips and twitters) although it can understand and communicate with Scrabble tiles (which also give it its name, "Dren"). Within a period of weeks, its accelerated evolutionary development leads to an adult form portrayed by Delphine Chaneac, who is moved to Elsa's remote, dilapidated childhood farmhouse in order to keep Dren's existence secret, even as she continues to evolve into a series of alternately alluring and alarming forms...

Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) fashions some well-worn material (this is basically a less-schlocky Species with far better acting and visual effects) into a film that builds from dispassionate scientific drive to parental pride to increasing horror, and Brody & Polley make for a compelling lead couple. And Chaneac delivers a remarkable physical performance, one of the more seamless blendings of acting, makeup and visual F/X in recent-ish memory. With her creased forehead, eyes almost as wide and set far apart as Anya Taylor-Joy and backwards-pointing legs, she's a figure that's at once fascinating, emphatic, childlike, and surreally sensual. The movie doesn't quite stick its landing (it's not bad, per se, but kind of obvious), but up until then, the film is the Splice o' life.

This year's Antlers offers an eerie, rustic tale inspired by the "Wendigo" myth of Native American folklore. Keri Russell plays a woman named Julia Meadows who teaches in a middle school in a small Oregon town. She becomes deeply concerned with one of her young charges, a boy named Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas), due to his disturbing recital of a made-up myth he concocts for a school project (replete with some graphic illustrations), causing her and her sherriff brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons), to investigate the boy's home life. This leads to the discovery of what happened to Lucas' father in the bowels on an unused mine while he was running a secret meth lab, and how what he discovered down there lead to his gradual transformation into something not human...something with an insatiable craving for raw flesh, animal or human.

Director Scott Cooper (Black Mass, Hostiles) takes a story by Nick Antosca ("The Quiet Boy"), and creates a slow-burn psychological pressure-cooker out of it. Russell delivers an emphatic performance as a woman wounded by parental abuse from the past who hopes to atone by protecting this child, and young Thomas, with his pale, pinched features, earns immediate sympathy for being put into a Man Up situation that no child should have to endure. The movie is ultimately a bit slight, and doesn't delve into a lot of the side content that might have fleshed out the narrative (like Russell's past -- including an apparent drinking problem -- that's only obliquely alluded to). Hell, I spent the first half of the movie thinking that Russell and Plemons were an estranged married couple! That said, when it lurches into standard creature fare in the home stretch, it does deliver some genuine, well-paced shocks, and the monster design is pretty damn nifty.

Skipping back to that jolly, disease-free year of 2019, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is adapted from a series of popular books by Alvin Schwartz from the 80s and early 90s. it takes place in the small, Pennsylvania town of Mill Valley, starting on Halloween night of 1968, where three friends, Stella, Auggie and Chuck (Zoe Coletti, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur), whilst fleeing from a pack of jock bullies (they toss a flaming bag of poo into their passing car), run into a young draft-dodger Ramon Morales (Michael Garza) at the local drive-in. After the movie, they check out the local haunted house, where it's purported that local legend Sarah Bellows was accused of witchcraft and hung at the turn of the century. But when they discover her journal in the locked room where she was imprisoned, they find that stories starts to unspool by themselves on the pages as they watch...ones written in fresh blood, and that allude to nasty fates that target them all in turn (and adapted from stories told in Schwartz's books). Can they investigate Sarah's tragic backstory and put and end to the curse before it puts an end to them...?

Director Andre Ovredal (Trollhunter), working from a screen story by Del Toro, fashions the various stories from the books (which I admit I have not read) into a series of gruesome-by-PG-13-standards comeuppances for the various characters, including severed toes floating in stew, the head bully getting turned into a scarecrow and a falling-to-pieces "Jangly Man" who represents the worst special effects in a movie that otherwise does a great job evoking the scratchy, evocatively creepy illustrations from the books. For its intended 'tween audience, this is good "training wheels" horror. For adults, it's a bit scattershot and episodic (albeit with glimmers of genuine eerieness). Still, it's a more than enjoyable way to pass a few hours in the waning hours of October.