Only two days away from the official start date, so it's time to start cranking it up.
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Gerald’s Game (2017): 9/10
Coming hot on the heels of the phenomenal box office success of
It (and the less-than-successful release of the wretched
Dark Tower and that lousy, recently-cancelled TV version of
The Mist), it’s looking like a Stephen King renaissance has begun, and the latest from screenwriter and director Mike Flanagan (
Oculus, the terrific and underrated
Ouija: Origin Of Evil) manages to craft a fairly superb movie out of one of King’s more “unadaptable” novels. Carla Gugino plays a middle-aged yet still-stunning woman named Jesse who heads off for a weekend of sexytime with her older husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) in hopes of reigniting the spark that has cooled between them over the past several months. It’s not enough just to pop a few Viagra tablets and model a sleek new nightie, though…Gerald breaks out a pair of handcuffs to add a dash of S&M kink to their foreplay. Cuffing her wrists to the bedposts, Gerald generally creeps out Jesse with his borderline-rape fantasies…then has the most ill-timed fatal heart attack ever, leaving his distraught wife screaming for help with little hope of rescue from their remote beach house. You’d think it’d be impossible to make more than a half-hour short out of a scenario so limited in scope, but Flanagan squeezes every bit of tension out of Jesse’s plight, and Gugino delivers a superb one-woman show as both her body and psyche slowly breaks down under the strain, with flashbacks to a traumatizing childhood incident involving her father (Henry Thomas, in a startling turn that might very well ruin
E.T. for many viewers) adding extra layers of psychological torment as Jesse fights to keep herself sane and use what few tools she has at handcuffed-hand to extricate herself before the inevitable. Mainly a film of cleverly-staged interior monologues,
Gerald’s Game does feature some truly disturbing moments of raw terror, including a moment that ranks with the “hobbling” scene in
Misery and the botched electrocution in
The Green Mile as one of the most effectively horrific acts of violence in any adaptation of a King novel (I was literally covering my mouth in astounded revulsion, and I have a pretty strong stomach for cinematic gore). Currently streaming on Netflix,
Gerald’s Game can honestly be added to the upper-tier of King adaptations on either the big or small screen, and continues to place Flanagan as one of the brightest talents in horror right now.
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Bloody Birthday (1981): 3/10
Amusingly awkward “evil kids” schlocker about a trio of nefarious kiddies – all born during a total eclipse of the sun circa 1970 – who, a decade later, start offing local teens, parents and teachers because…uhh, reasons? Typically bad early-80’s horror, with poor performances from the three lead Bad Seeds, routine gore and a dearth of suspense. Some nicely gratuitous unclothed boobies, ‘tho.