Horror by Harrison

  “Are you really sure that you’d believe me, when others say I lied.” “Harrison,” you may be asking. “Why are you covering Once ? This isn’t a horror movie.” Correct, dear listener, it’s not. However, as I mentioned in my Welcome Post , I may occasionally branch out into other genres as well. These non-horror posts will be posted on the last week of any month with five weeks.  I first watched Once in high school in my Film Studies class. Because our class periods were 45 minutes long we had to watch the film in short chunks over a three day period, making it a little difficult to connect with the film. However, the music made an immediate impression and I bought the soundtrack as soon as I could and would listen to it on repeat. I decided to revisit the film and the second time (and first watching in one sitting) everything about it clicked. Simply put, this is a perfect film. Once was written and directed by John Carney ( Sing Street ) with the majority of the music an...

  “There are thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the continental United States… Abandoned subway systems, unused service routes, and deserted mine shafts… Many have no known purpose at all.” Jordan Peele broke out with his directorial debut in 2017 with Get Out , winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and a lot of people wondered if he could replicate that success when his second feature as a director was announced. Despite not being quite the cultural phenomenon that it’s predecessor was, the answer seemed to be a resounding “yes” when Us was released.  Us was written and directed by Jordan Peele and was released on March 22, 2019. Us had a budget of $20,000,000, made $71,117,625 upon opening, and went on to make $255,184,580 worldwide. Us received mostly positive reviews upon release, with critics praising Jordan’s script and direction and the performances from the cast. Us follows a family who are terrorized by doppelgangers of themselves (known as the Teth...

  While watching this film (for the first time) today, I kept thinking of Ian Malcolm’s line in Jurassic Park: “Now, eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs on your, on your dinosaur tour, right?”, except I replaced “dinosaur” with “witch” and “tour” with “film”. The film is engaging when it focuses on Pannochka (Natalya Varley, voiced by Klara Rumyanova), but those scenes are sadly few and far between. Viy was written by Aleksandr Ptushko, Konstantin Yershov, and Georgi Kropachyov while the latter two also directed, and was based on Nikolai Gogol’s novella of the same name. Viy was released on November 27th, 1967. Viy tells the story of Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov), a young seminary student who kills an old witch, Pannochka, who attempts to seduce and enchant him. After her death her body reverts to her (presumably natural) younger self and Khoma is forced by her father to sit with her body in prayer for three nights. Each night she rises from her coffin to get revenge but Khom...

  When creating my schedule for the first six months or so of this endeavor (I’m scheduled through the end of 2020, with a handful of 2021 films scheduled) I knew I wanted to visit one of the Invasion of the Body Snatcher films (none of which I’ve seen) but I wasn’t sure which. I knew that the ‘78 version is probably the most well-regarded, but I’m kinda anal about watching things in the order they were released (and I’ll be having a lot of 70s/80s films in the coming months) so I decided to explore the original. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was written by Daniel Mainwaring ( The Big Steal , This Woman is Dangerous ), directed by Don Siegel ( The Killers , Dirty Harry ) and was based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released on February 5th, 1956 but was largely ignored by critics at the time. However, over the years it has been reviewed extremely positively and has been remade three times (with a fourth reportedly in developm...

“REPENT THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH” I have a complicated relationship with zombie films. There are a lot of zombie films that I really love (like Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead ) and some that I really don’t (looking at you White Zombie ). It’s a genre that has a lot of potential for greatness, but these days frequently feels overplayed and underwhelming. I won’t put all of the blame on AMC’s The Walking Dead , but it deserves a fair amount of it. Modern zombie films frequently fail because of poor characterization and repetitive plotting. 28 Days Later , while seemingly pretty standard on the surface, is not one of those films. 28 Days Later was written by Alex Garland ( Never Let Me Go , Ex Machina , Annihilation ) and directed by Danny Boyle ( Trainspotting , Slumdog Millionaire , Yesterday ) and was released on November 1st, 2002. 28 Days Later received positive reviews upon release, with critics praising Boyle’s direction. 28 Days Later was made for a budget...