Going to start this post off with the clean winner of the pack.
Knocked my socks off. A truly scary movie that’s a throw back to what makes horror movies so great. A single mother is struggling to raise her young son after her husband dies. He’s terrified of monsters lurking in the house, which makes him a difficult kid. One night, her son pulls a book off the shelf for them to read before bedtime: Mister Babadook. Its red cover holds a sinister presence that begins to seep off the page and into their home. Awesome idea and a visual presentation that simply needs to be seen. So many amazing set ups and gorgeous cinematography. The sound design really sells this thing, the monster just comes alive because of it (a point off for using the Jurassic Park raptor scream that’s really out of place). A forboding figure, he’s at his worst when you can’t see him. I think this is one of the coolest monster movies ever made. I think it’s closest to a mix of Nightmare on Elm Street and The Exorcist in terms of tone and story. Very low on gore and violence, so it sells its scares by the creep factor. Really impressed by writer/director Jennifer Kent, sign me up for whatever she does next.
Sticking to the WTF category of filmmaking, writer/director Kevin Smith drops another horror tale on his fans. Tusk, born from the ideas gestated in a podcast with fellow friend/producer Scott Mosier, we watch a mad man turn another man into a walrus in the shady edges of Canada! Super weird, often creepy and surprisingly beautiful. Kevin Smith landed a great cast and crew (Michael Parks and Johnny Depp doing wonders) to make this crazy idea actually work. Production design is great and the monster effect is really impressive. They got every dime of the $3 million production budget up on screen. Two gripes: the terrible choice to do a fast zoom out on the man-walrus really cheapens the reveal and I think they made a mistake anatomically with the front legs. With how Howard Howe prepared Wallace for the transformation, I don’t understand how he could be so ambulatory with his arms. Sure there might be some kind of explanation you could come up with, but if you are trying to sell body horror (which they do really well otherwise) you gotta do it all the way.
I’m always surprised to see a new Tremors movie. I hold the original 1990 monster movie a classic and none of the direct to video series ever match up. Spaced many years apart, they all come off as rather cheap, adding new types of “graboids” and never match the fun and tension of the original. Bloodlines is one of the better entries, bringing series mainstay Burt Gummer to Africa on a graboid hunt. Jamie Kennedy plays a major part as Travis Welker and holds it down as Burt’s opportunistic sidekick. The main worm graboid worm and the “ass blaster” variant are the creatures run amok. All the moving creatures are done in CG and in low lighting look really good. The death count is low and with a PG-13 rating, not much is shown (this series was never about gore though). While there are splashes of blood here and there, it’s clear a lot of on-screen action was avoided (even holes in the ground) to save on budget to use on CG scenes of worm jumping out of the ground like an orca at SeaWorld. Bloodlines falls short on the physicality and weight of the original making it more dull and incomplete than it should be. While disappointing, I did enjoyed watching it.
A fun romantic comedy take on the zombie genre. Aubrey Plaza stars as Beth who dies from a snake bite when she goes hiking alone. Her boyfriend, Zach (Dane DeHaan) and her parents are obviously distaught over her premature death. Zach hangs around her parents for the next few days when suddenly they start ignoring him. Checking to see what’s up, he sees Beth walking around the house! Clever movie that’s both sad and funny. It’s got some cool ideas along with smart execution (really liked the end). Impressive work for an  indie budget too. Stacked cast with Paul Reiser, John C Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines and Anna Kendrick.