TITLE & REVIEW
This is an Italian effort from the mid-1970s.
An aristocratic woman starts having visions of a past life.
Is she being possessed by the spirit of an ancestor
who made a deal with the devil?
The climax owes something to previous efforts like The Exorcist . Unfortunately, the film-makers lacked the budget for anything more than a bit of dodgy blue-screen work. And some pea soup, of course.
Rebecca Hall
looks like a young
Saffron Burrows
, and seems to be Britain's answer to
Lynn Collins
- she has been in a lot of major films, but nobody recognises her.
Until now.
Our heroine is an expert in fraudulent hauntings, in 1922 England. The land is still suffering from the loss of life in the First World War. She is summoned to investigate a haunting in a remote country house. The result is a stack of references to other ghost movies.
The house is now in use as a boarding school for young boys. Dominic West (The Wire) is the Headmaster, and Imelda Staunton (a vicious teacher in the Harry Potter series) is the cook.
In 1943, a British hospital ship is torpedoed in the mid-Atlantic.
Dexter Fletcher (
Kick-Ass
) and Nurse
Olivia Williams
end up being rescued by an American submarine.
Then the spooky events start …
The sub's dead Captain seems to be haunting the vessel. Specifically he is targeting the senior officers - Bruce Greenwood ( The Core ), Scott Foley (Scrubs, The Unit) and Holt Mcallany ( The Losers ). Luckily, the Final Girl has Matthew Davis ( Vampire Diaries ) on her side. Yes, there are a lot of very pretty (and unrealistically well-groomed) folk on this boat.
Despite the overly attractive main cast, the director ( David Twohy ) does a great job with the visuals and the atmospherics. The spookiest aspects come from the script, written by Darren Aronofsky . Unfortunately, the submarine set was built 33% larger than a real submarine. This facilitates access for the cameras and crew when filming. However, it undermines both the authenticity and the claustrophobia of the unique environment.
Cherie Lunghi
and
Neve Campbell
stay in a stately home haunted by Patrick Stewart (
Star Trek: TNG
). For once, dramatic thespian Stewart plays an actual Shakespearean!
Spring/Summer
An American billionaire inventor moves his family into Canterville House, an English mansion he has bought. One of the boys has been expelled from every school in his State, and burned down the last school's gymnasium - presumably a reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer . The daughter has dropped out of Harvard Law, because she would rather help the underdogs or something.
Lady Deborah de Canterville ( Hayden Gwynne ) invites the newcomers to a dinner party. This is the usual fish-out-of-water scenario. The Americans, played by English actors, are uncultured. The English are snobs and sexists. The daughter tries to upset this, by becoming the first female rider in the all-male steeplechase. She also agrees to a mixed-doubles tennis match. Perhaps this is a commentary on mixed-gender sports.The mansion is haunted by Sir Simon de Canterville (Anthony Stewart Head - Buffy the Vampire Slayer ), who fancies himself an actor and plays a variety of different ghosts.
Autumn/Winter
This ties up all the plot threads in a predictable way. The tweenage daughter acts as the ghost's attorney in a supernatural court. Meanwhile, her brothers search for the treasure.
An American billionaire inventor moves his family into Canterville House,
an English mansion he has bought.
The mansion is haunted by Sir Simon de Canterville (Stephen Fry -
).
The daughter's love interest is Freddie Highmore ( Bates Motel ).
After the two previous live-action versions, this is actually an animation. The story is pretty much the same, however, although abreviated a bit.
Florida criminal attourney Keanu Reeves (
The Matrix
) is hired to join the New York law firm of Al Pacino (Heat).
His wife ( Charlize Theron ) hangs around with Tamara Tunie , and begins to hallucinate. Is she going insane? In truth, she did a better version of this in The Astronaut's Wife . However, this story is focused on Keannu - the small-town boy being corrupted by the temptations of the big city. He finds himself fantasising about co-worker Connie Nielsen (who looks just like Dina Meyer ).
Barbara Hershey
is stalked and molested by an invisible demon in this
Poltergeist
rip-off.
Shockingly, every time the monster appears (invisibly)
a pounding Heavy Metal theme song starts up.
Ron Silver ( Time Cop ) tries to save her. He is a Parapsychologist, and he plans to freeze the demon with liquid nitrogen!
Catholic lawyer
Laura Linney
is hired by the local Bishop to defend a priest (Tom
), who is accused of killing a parishioner.
The young woman, Emily Rose (
Jennifer Carpenter
) died during an exorcism ...
The Prosecutor, evidently a devout Atheist, constantly undermines the Defence with his use of medical science and FACTS. However, as Ms Linney gets more involved in the case she believes more and more in the magical monsters ...
This is a Hollywood remake of an Asian horror film,
itself giving a supernatural twist on blind-girl thrillers like Jennifer 8.
A blind girl (
Jessica Alba
) gets an eye transplant,
but as she begins to see things again she starts to see things that may not be there.
She is not merely halucinating,
instead she is seeing ghosts.
Alba is playing a Caucasian, her sister is Posey Parker and she needs Doctor Alessandra Nivola ( Face/Off ) to translate for her when they visit Mexico!
This low-budget lightweight shocker is also known as
Haunted High School, which gives away most of the plot.
The ghost of former headmaster MC Gainey ( Lost ) and his demonic sidekick start to bump off pupils and staff. Victims include School Librarian Charisma Carpenter , in a blink-and-you-miss-it scene that wastes her talent.
This is a Mexican horror film,
subtitled and with no major Hollywood stars.
A young woman motorist has a creepy encounter at the Kilometre 31 road-marker outside Mexico City. Her twin sister investigates the ghostly goings-on.
The ghost in this case is La Llorona - also used as freak-of-the-week in Grimm. In an interesting stretch, the river she haunts flows past the mile-marker, and through a storm drain under the city.
The problem seems to be that the TV show Supernatural has ruined this entire genre. The Winchester brothers would sort this all out in 42 minutes, plus time for advert breaks and the end-credit sequence.
Lance Hendricksen (
Aliens
) and Sketchy from
Dark Angel
act out the plot of
Ghost Ship
. Judd Nelson (Breakfast Club) and
Scarlet Chorvat
round out the cast.
Saoirse Ronan
is murdered by Stanley Tucci (
Captain America
). She watches from Purgatory while her parents Mark Wahlberg (
The Happening
) and
Rachel Weitz
try to get on with their lives. Like
Ghost
, but with less emphasis on the romance angle.
This was Peter Jackson 's adaptation of a popular novel. It is a divisive film - made to cash in on a book, it is uninspiring as a stand-alone piece.
Rebecca Hall
is haunted by the ghostly presence of someone from her past.
Yes, this describes
Awakening, The (2011)
and at least one of her other movies.
This time she is a grieving widow,
and she suspects that her husband is haunting their home.
The widow has trouble sleeping, and starts waking up in strange places. This makes her question what is real and what is a halucination. Then she discovers that her deceased husband was keeping secrets from her. Was this linked to his suicide?
The dead husband had a secret obsession with celtic paganism, so the widow investigates the books he has on the subject. When she discovers a strange house nearby, on the other side of the lake, this becomes a bit more like the movie Sinister ...
Psychiatrist Dr Manuel Davalos (
Medium
) gets a young man released from the asylum on his 21st Birthday.
The man teams up with his sister (
Karen Gillen
) who is obsessed with destroying a magical mirror.
The film is basically a rehash of 1408 , with predictably excessive use of the untruthful narrator. There are one or two powerful scares, but once it becomes apparent that the characters' perception of reality is corrupted beyond all recognition by the mirror itself the whole story becomes essentially meaningless.
The title character is Father Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe -
Gladiator
). His unconventional approach to exorcism is reminiscent of James Woods' in the
Scary Movie
franchise.
Of course, just like in kind of movie that Woods parodied in
The Hard Way
he comes to the attention of Internal Affairs -
well, the Vatican's equivalent.
There are a couple of references to the Vatican's crimes - the covering up of sexual abuse scandals, and the atrocities committed by the Spanish Inquisition. However, this is still basically a whitewash of the institution. After all, it does the same thing as Sin-Eater AKA The Order , by making it looks like magic is real and the Vatican is the only institution that uses it to fight evil!
Pa Winchester (Jeffery Dean Morgan -
Supernatural
) is divorced from
Kyra Sedgwick
, and gets shared custody of their two daughters.
But the youngest one buys a cursed demon-box in a yard-sale ...
This was produced by Sam Raimi , who wrote and directed the far superior Drag me To Hell . That film featured Gypsy magicks, whereas this one has Yiddish mysticism. Both are examples of the Magic Negro cliche, where any non-mainstream culture is only involved insofar as its purported magical concepts.
The result is quite a let-down. Supernatural possession in the American suburbs was done to death by the Paranormal Activity series, and this effort is not in the same league. Quite disappointing, in all.
For some reason,
Charisma Carpenter
is not glamourous or naked.
Instead she is surrounded by a cast of unknowns.
As an American author, she moves into a remote house in England. There she has visions of people being brutally murdered.
As with many terrible horror movies, the individual behind this effort both wrote AND directed it. That said, there is actually a nice twist ending
It is the 1970s, just like in
The Conjuring (2013)
. Mad Professor Jared Harris (
Fringe
) and his students Sam Claflin (
Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014)
) and
Erin Richards
investigate Jane the virgin (
Olivia Cooke
). When their funding is cut by the University,
they move to a remote house out in the countryside.
This is only partly found footage, so like Insidious the pseudo-realistic feel means the writers can use the usual cliches. For example, there is a power cut and everyone runs around with the camera providing the light.
The cast is first-rate, but the let-down is the script. It just has nothing new to offer.
Professor
Sigourney Weaver
and her sidekick, Cillian Murphy (previously seen as a psychiatrist in
Batman Begins
), debunk fake psychic phenomenon.
Elizabeth Olsen
, a young student, joins them in their investigations.
Simon Silver (Robert DeNiro -
Hide & Seek
), a Yuri Gellar type, comes out of retirement.
Murphy becomes obsessed with exposing him.
Then bad things start to happen ...
This is billed as This year's Sixth Sense . From that, one gets a sense of predictability. A supernatural thriller with a twist in the end? The same route has been ploughed by all four leading stars lately: Olsen's big break was the disappointing effort Silent House , Murphy did Redeye, Weaver was in Cabin in the Woods , and (if you go back a few years) DeNiro was in Hide & Seek .
If anything, this particular twist is … unforeseen despite being foreshadowed. But it is ultimately a bit unsatisfying. As if the whole thing really did not amount to much. The ending of Sixth Sense makes you re-interpret the entire film, and allows you to enjoy it on subsequent viewings. This effort ends on something of a non-sequitor.
A young embalmer, son of Rutger Hauer (
Blade Runner
) goes to a Catholic seminary.
But after his final exams he realises he is an atheist.
The Principal sends him to the Vatican, where he is assigned to help Exorcist Anthony Hopkins (
Hannibal
).
A pregnant teenage girl displays supernatural knowledge, but the newbie stays in constant denial.
The climax is creepy exorcism - but there is nothing original.
The Last Exorcism
is better, though not original either.
This was supposedly inspired by a true story. The moral of the tale - magic is real?
If Satan and JHVH were real, we would use prayers instead of science and technology on a daily basis.
Instead of electrons whizzing around, creating electricity,
we would have little angels dancing in pin-sized hamster wheels to make our machinery work!
An asbestos-removal crew are set to work in a derelict asylum.
The result is a great suspense thriller,
combining a creepy setting, subtle direction and a great cast.
Instead of a bunch of teenagers we get Josh Lucas (
Hulk
), David Caruso (CSI: Miami) and Peter Mullan (
Westworld: S2
).
This is a remake of a Spanish-language film,
and while it has its moments there is very little original about it.
The one redeeming feature about it is that it looks like a low-budget horror, shot in real-time ...
Our protagonist is Elizabeth Olsen - taller and more buxom than her sisters, and already being spoken of as a potential Oscar-winner. She, her dad and her uncle are fixing up their decrepit holiday home. The house has been targeted by local criminals in the past, so all the windows are boarded up. Combined with the fact the power is shorted out, and the sun is setting, means there is no light to speak of in the house. The lonely, remote house with no land-line or cell-phone coverage, plays the perfect venue for a suspense/horror film. It is a Cabin in the Woods.
The middle Act of the film consists of the protagonist being chased through the darkened labyrinth of rooms by unseen stalkers. This was done so much better in George Clarke's film The Last Light . Is she up against bloodthirsty hill-billies or murderous ghostly presences? She does not care, she just blubbers like Heather Donahue in Blair Witch Project .
The climax has a twist ending. Yes, how predictable. There are three other films mentioned in this review, and all three are better than this one. Its redeeming feature, other than the buxom protagonist, is the real-time aspect.
This is a found footage film with a difference.
Three twenty-somethings video themselves on a road trip across the USA.
First the cameraman starts to see peoples' faces blur - like in
The Ring
. It seems that everyone he films is doomed.
This is a supernatural thriller set in England.
Five college students get a call from the College Accommodation Officer
telling them they have been allocated living space in a shared house.
They turn up and indulge in the typical teenager/student type activities
including hard drugs and a seance.
One of the students is a very young-looking Sam Troughton ( Robin Hood 2006 ), and another is Billie Piper (who looks the same as she always looks).
This is a Found Footage effort made from segments of a documentary.
The intended subject is an old woman with alzheimers.
Unfortunately she turns out to be the victim of a demonic possession.
The protagonists have a lot of excuses to carry their cameras in every scene. Unfortunately the best bits happen off-screen. Up until the end, which lacks the mystery of The Blair Witch Project (1999) .
The most shocking thing about this film is the fact it was produced by Bryan Singer . His name is generally a badge of quality, but this is a generic low-budget disappointment.
Jason Behr (
Roswell
) is the title character, a young American tattoo artist who wanders Asia plying his trade.
He wears a long-sleeved jacket in most scenes.
He winds up in New Zealand, where he shacks up with Xena - a young Maori woman, not Lucy Lawless . A demonic ghost hunts down and murders everyone he tattoos. His only option is to find out who the ghost was, and appease the undead spirit.
This starts with a witch-burning in historical small-town New England, USA.
Not during the classical Puritan witch-hunt of 1692,
but a Roman Catholic one set in 1845.
They even hammer a metal mask onto the suspected witch's face, like what happened to
Barbara Steele
in the classic Italian horror
Black Sunday
.
In the modern day, a journalist (Jeffrey Dean Morgan - Supernatural ) gets sent to the small town to check out a rumoured cattle mutilation. He is desperate for work, since he got fired from his job on a real newspaper for making up stories. As a result, he is more than happy to embellish the cattle mutilation story-line with details of a creepy doll he found nearby. Of course, this means he transgresses and awakens the witch's spirit.
The locals assume they have been visited by the Virgin Mary. The Bishop (Cary Elwes - The Princess Bride ) sends an inquisitor to verify if it is a proper bona fide miracle. The parish priest, Father Hagan (William Sadler - Shawshank Redemption ), uncovers a more sinister truth. Involving historical witch-burnings.
A pair of college students drive across America.
An ill-advised shortcut along a back-road gets them trapped.
So far, the most original thing about the film is the casting of English actress
Emily Blunt
as the female half of the duo, instead of the usual bikini babe.
The pair get trapped in a snowdrift on a lonely mountain road. They start bickering as they fall apart under the strain. This is one of the better things about the film - the Blair Witch Project type examination of a group under stress. They enounter ghostly figures - first some mysterious hooded monks, then a vicious Highway Patrolman.
As well as an unoriginal script, the film is also let down by choppy editing.
Young lawyer Daniel Radcliffe (
Harry Potter
) is sent to oversee the sale of a remote country house.
The superstitious locals try to dissuade him,
but he will not take the hint.
Local landowner Ciaran Hinds (
Ghost Rider
) helps him.
Young Harry ends up in the house,
which turns out to be haunted by a CGI banshee.
And then the village's children start to die ...
This is adapted from a novel, but there was actually a British TV version in the early 1990s. Despite being adapted by Jane Goldman ( Kick-Ass ), this version is actually a bit disappointing. It has been inflated up for the big screen, giving the ghost a lot more screen time. The original was a masterpiece of suspense, where the ghost was sometimes heard but rarely seen. This time, the sounds are more akin to the Lewton Bus, when it is all just a fake scare. The ghost itself is seen regularly, about as frightening as CGI can get (i.e. not at all). And the ending? Well, the facts have been altered so the tone is not so bleak. Basically, a dumbing-down for the mass-market audience who want a happy ending.
The haunted house has lain empty since the events of the previous film.
But forty years have passed, and it is now the Blitz.
A small class of half-a-dozen children are evacuated to the house.
They have two teachers to look after them –
nice to see that class sizes were so small in the good old days.
However, the ghostly Woman In Black awakens and starts to do typically creepy things.
The ghost can apparently read the minds of her victims, as well as possessing them. The young lady teacher ( Phoebe Fox ), the Final Girl horror movie trope, has a secret: she once had her own child up for adoption, and never found him. One of the boys in the class has been orphaned, and he also gets special treatment from the ghost.
The problem with this film is that it is basically just a ghost story. There are a lot of jump-scares (AKA the infamous Lewton Bus) – but while ghosts can make you jump, they really cannot do much to you. Except in the inevitable over-blown climax, but that is a different matter. The truth is, as with all ghost stories there is a lot of suspense but no pay-off.
This is a prequel to the other films in the series.
It starts in a small town in New Mexico,
where a young girl has developed psychic powers.
We flash forward to the year 2010, before the events of the first movie in the series. Elise ( Lin Shaye ) and her team of parapsychologists are called in by Kirk Acevedo ( Arrow: Season 6 ) who is now living in her childhood home. The ghosts and demons are still on the loose.
Delivered by the brains behind the
Saw
series, this is their version of the new
Paranormal Activity
type of suburban horror.
But it lacks the realism of a Found Footage story.
A young boy is haunted - not by a ghost, but a Dream Demon, like something out of Nightmare on Elm Street . His mother ( Rose Byrne ) tries everything. They eventually have to call in parapsychologist Elise ( Lin Shaye ).
Rose Byrne
tries to settle into normality after the events of the first movie.
For some reason, her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson -
Watchmen
) is behaving strangely.
The parapsychologist team have info on a haunting when he was a child. Elise ( Lin Shaye ) was the original investigator.
This is set a few years before the events of the first two films.
A young woman visits Elise (
Lin Shaye
) and asks for a seance.
Of course, that would be fraught with risks.
When you call out to the dead, all of them can hear you!
The young woman lives with her father (Dermot Mulroney - Stoker (2013) ), who makes her look after her younger brother. Naturally she misses her dead mother, which is her motivation for transgressing with the supernatural. Basically, with the best of intentions she opens a portal to hell and lets a monster out. This particular monster has a fetish for leaving muddy footprints around, which raises the audience's suspense, and dangling from the ceiling so it can grab a victim and shock the audience.
Elise reluctantly tries to help. After all, the same monster that is harrassing the family also attacked her. But the woman in black is out to get her, and attacks her every time she enters the other realm. The father then calls in a couple of guys with a ghostfacer website - Angus Sampson ( Shut Eye ) and Leigh Whannell. Yes, this is the team's origin story!
This is set nine years after the events of
Insidious 2 (2013)
, and a lot has happened in the meantime.
Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson -
Watchmen
) has been divorced by his wife (
Rose Byrne
), and his mother (
Barbara Hershey
) has just died.
At the funeral her recognises her friend,
the one who hynotised him and his kids
into forgetting the supernatural events.
However, this encounter helps him remember ...
Josh drops his eldest son Dalton off at college. Since Dalton is studying art, his tutor advises him to open his mind. Just like in Stir of Echoes , this enables him to see ghostly things. Well, it removes the block and helps him remember ...
Father and son both try to work out why they are seeing ghosts. Of course, they are estranged from each other so they do not work together until the climax.
A nun has committed suicide at a remote convent in central Europe.
A priest and a trainee nun (
Taissa Farmiga
) are sent to investigate.
The demon's powers seem inconsistent. Sometimes it can only play mind-games with victims, but other times it can use overwhelming physical force.
The ending features Lorraine ( Vera Farmiga ), and is an introduction into The Conjuring (2013) .
The events of the previous film have become an urban myth.
Luckily the trainee nun (
Taissa Farmiga
) is no longer a trainee,
and now has a trainee of her own.
When the Vatican discovers a series of supernatural murders,
the two nuns are sent to investigate.
It turns out that the priest from the original film
has died off-screen, so the cast is kept to a minimum.
The handyman from the previous film is still working for the Church, but on a freelance basis. He is now in a girls' school, where he seems to have a relationship with one of the teachers ( Anna Popplewell ). However, the evil nun-like demon Valak seems to be back.
The two storylines inevitably intersect. As with the previous film, the demon's powers seem inconsistent. Sometimes it possesses peoples' bodies, sometimes it is in two places at once. Luckily there is a large supporting cast for it to menace and kill off.
This is a prequel to one of the movies in the
Conjuring
series.
It works well as a stand-alone,
but the ending ties into the other movie.
A doll-maker (Anthony Lapaglia - ) and his wife ( Miranda Otto ) lose their daughter in a terrible accident. Twelve years later, the couple invite a nun and a half-dozen orphaned teenage girls to live in the house. Creepy things start to happen.
Annabelle is not just a killer doll, like Chucky in the Child's Play series. She is more of a conduit for a demonic entity. This means that by the climax, there is a massive demon on the loose to terrify the victims. It also seems to teleport, because it possesses the ability to move instantly between locations.
This film achieves the three main things that any good horror movie should deliver, but so few actually do. It creates an atmosphere of suspense, it introduces characters that the audience cares about, and it subjects them to convincing jeopardy.
This story is about a pregnant woman (
Annabelle Wallis
) who collects dolls.
Luckily the opening credits sequence has a title card which explains what dolls are,
or else the audience might have been confused by this.
The woman and her husband live in a city that lives in fear of satanic cultists. Just like Los Angeles in the late 1960s, with the Manson family on the loose. And by incredible coincidence, one of the cultists lives next door.
The woman's creepy new doll seems to be possessed by the ghost of one of the Cultists. However, it turns out that the Cultists were trying to summon a demon. All this seems to contradict the events of the prequel, which indicates the doll was possessed by a previous demon from
The woman and her husband regularly attend church. The preacher (Tony Amendola - Stargate SG-1 ) does his best to help. However, the real help is from an African-American woman ( Alfre Woodward ).
To up the ante, the pregnant woman gives birth to her child. This reduces the movie to the old child-in-jeopardy storyline, which is a step up from the tweenager-fem-jep one.
After the events of the previous Annabelle movies,
the evil doll is handed over to the Warrens.
They lock it in their vault, with all the other haunted stuff.
A Roman Catholic priest blesses it every week,
so the stuff is only dangerous to people scared of Catholic ghosts.
All other religious denominations have nothing to fear.
The Warrens have a daughter. When they go away for a few days, they leave a teenage babysitter in charge. The babysitter's friends drop by, and one of them transgresses.
The movie starts with a flashback to the 1600s.
La Lorona (
Marisol Ramirez
) was an embittered wife who became a family annihilator.
Like Medea in the Ancient Greek myth, she drowned her own children.
The main story takes place in 1973. A widow ( Linda Cardinelli ) who works for Child Protective Services has to confiscate two young children who belong to Patricia Velazquez . Unfortunately the real threat to the children is not their mother - it is the ghost of La Lorona herself!
The widow has two small children of her own, and they quickly find themselves menaced by the ghost. The widow goes to a Catholic preacher (Tony Amendola - Stargate SG-1 ), who previously appeared in Annabelle (2014) . That is the only connection between this movie and the others in the series, in case you are wondering.
The preacher puts the widow in touch with a freelance exorcist, Sniper from Training Day (2001). Since La Lorona is a Catholic ghost, she is highly vulnerable to Catholic magic such as holy water. This is very inconvenient for her, since she is a water-based spirit who tries to drown her victims.
This is a somewhat lightweight effort. Since there is a very small number of central characters and a monster that has no real physical form, there is little or no bloodshed. As a result, there may be suspense but nobody really cares about the outcome.
This story is set in the early 1970s,
so the compulsory sense of isolation and helplessness is compounded
by the lack of Twenty-first Century communications like internet or cell-phones.
A family (including five daughters) move into an old farmhouse. They eventually explore the basement ... Yes, this is a trope that has already been done in Cabin in the Woods , and this should advise you what kind of film this is. The director also made Insidious , so the suspense level is high. But there is nothing really original or surprising in it.
The husband is often away, so when spooky things happen the wife ( Lili Taylor ) calls in a couple of Ghostbusters - Ed (Patrick Wilson - Watchmen ) and Lorraine ( Vera Farmiga ).
This film has been condemned as anti-female, because the antagonist is the ghost of a witch-woman. But with strong roles for a couple of critically-acclaimed actresses (both aged over thirty-five), this is about as good as it gets for a film set in the Seventies.
This story is set in the early 1970s,
so we get the compulsory soundtrack of anachronistic music
and montage of Margaret Thatcher clips from the 1980s.
A family (two sons and two daughters) move into an old house. They play with a ouiji board ... Yes, this is a trope that has already been done in The Exorcist , and this should advise you what kind of film this is. The director manages to keep the suspense level is high. But there is nothing really original or surprising in it.
The husband has abandoned his family, so when spooky things happen the mother ( Frances O'Connor ) calls in a couple of Ghostbusters - Ed (Patrick Wilson - Watchmen ) and Lorraine ( Vera Farmiga ). As befits the Magic Negro trope, the outsiders happen to be experts in the exact same superstition of the demon. The Ghostbusters work for the Roman Catholic Church, so it turns out that the demon is a Catholic one. Surely it should be an Anglican Episcopalian one, since that is the State religion of England.
Hubby and Lorraine Warren conduct an exorcism on a young boy circa 1981.
This is rife with references to
The Exorcist (1973)
, starting with the visual cues in the scene when the priest arrives by taxi.
Unfortunately the demon is too strong to be exorcised,
so the boy's sister's boyfriend copies the priest at the end of the movie
and volunteers to take the demon inside himself.
Even more unfortunately,
the possessed boy does not bother to jump out a window and kill himself.
He waits until the Warrens have signed off on the failed exorcism,
and some time later he murders his sleazy friend.
The Warrens are called in as expert witnesses. Can they do what the heroes of Ghostbusters 2 failed to do, and prove in a 1980s US court that the supernatural exists? And if so, is this a get-out-of-jail-free card for the killer? After all, the victim is the kind of worthless and disposable character who is usually the first victim in a horror movie anyway. After all, the man played what can only be described as popular music.
It seems that the demon involved in the murder was summoned by witchcraft. The Warrens need help, so they recruit Father Kastner (John Noble - Fringe ), the priest who helped expose the Disciples of the Ram Cult. He is portrayed as a hero, although he is a bigoted bastard who hates everyone of a different religion. For example, he complains that Satanists seek to spread chaos and dispair. Of course, such a great actor has an important role - despite only appearing in a couple of scenes.
The witch's plan is to commit three human sacrifices, each with two victims – one by murder, one by suicide. Not only is Ed Warren virtually crippled by a heart attack, but he is also cursed by the witch to attack his wife. On the one hand, this is necessary to raise the stakes for the audience. After all, the Warrens have defeated everything that Eeevil has thrown at them. On the hand, the jeopardy is low because we know the good guys always win. However, since Ed is dependent of life-saving medication he is already effectively neutralised as far as the story goes. Having him be cursed is almost a step too far.
Ryan Kwanten (
True Blood
) has to fight a ventriloquist's doll that is possessed.
Not the most original sub-genre.
This is yet another American attempt at the kind of supernatural suspense that the Asian film market has mastered so well. The final twist, however, makes it quite watchable.
A group of tweenagers meet up in a haunted house.
Naturally, it all goes badly for them.
A police detective (Frank Grillo - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) arrives to investigate the multiple fatalities. One of the tweens is recovered alive, so a police psychologist ( Maria Bello ) conducts the interview.
The main story is told in flashback as a survivor talks them through what happened. Of course, this leaves the story open to the classic untruthful narrator twist.
Madison (
Annabelle Wallis
) is both pregnant and in an abusive marriage.
This combination means she summons a ghostly entity,
not unlike a classic J-Horror ghost.
The ghost quickly changes its MO to a more standard American slasher one,
as it works its way through a laundry list of grudges
against people like Dr Weaver (
Jacqueline McKenzie
).
Like in most horror movies these days, there is an over-reliance on CGI SPFX. When the ghost gives Madison visions of the murders it comits The CGI rendering make it seem as if the ghost teleports her into the murder scene, although it might be more like a holographic reconstruction.
Madison goes to the police, and meets a young male detective who becomes her sister's love interest. He discovers that the ghostly killer might not be a ghost at all, merely a super-powered supernatural killing machine. His course of action is to go investigating without backup, and to chase the monster into the tunnels under Seattle. This is probably the first movie since The Night Strangler (1975) to use them as a setting, but that does not absolve the poor characterisation.
Madison gets thrown in a jail cell with Scorpion ( Zoe Bell ). Her sister goes looking for the truth in a disused clinic. This is a massive art deco building on a clifftop - like The House on Haunted Hill (1999) .
The big reveal also explains why Wallis, best known as a blonde, is sweltering under an enormous brunette wig. This leads on to the biggest cop-shop massacre since The Terminator (1984) .
Roboticist
Allison Williams
works for a toy company.
Instead of doing her job and making a next-generation Furby,
she builds an animatronic ten-year-old girl named M3gan.
Luckily, when her ten-year-old niece is orphaned
the young girl gets the robot as a playmate.
What could possibly go wrong?
The robocist's cow-orkers are a cliched bunch. Her diverse minions are reminiscent of the scientists in Hollow Man , while boss is an annoying Asian over-achiever like in The Relic . They are all lined up as generic victims for the eventual killing spree.
A retired baseball player, Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell -
) and his family move into a suburban house.
They discover there is a disused swiming pool in the back yard,
so they fix it up and start using it again.
Then spooky events start happening.
Ray retired because of his declining health, but after swimming in the pool he appears to get better. The wife, Eve ( Kerry Condon ), gets suspicious and investigates further.
Since the father has been the most severely affected, the natural comparison for this is with The Shining .
This is a Found Footage documentary following a fake Exorcist (the Professor from
Veronica Mars: Season 3
) as he does one last job ...
The Exorcist and his camera crew go to a small farm in Louisiana where Nell ( ) is supposed to be demonically possessed. En route, they interview some locals like in Blair Witch Project and end up hearing tales of a satanic cult. Of course, they ignore everything they hear. After all, since the exorcist is a fake they assume the demonic possession is fake too.
Things get creepy quickly enough. The combination of night-time shooting and gun-toting rednecks hostile to strangers is enough to guarantee that, even without the supernatural element.
The original was found footage but this is more straightforward.
As with many sequels, this is quite unoriginal.
It is not merely a stack of cliches, but it is completely predictable.
The film starts slowly, with repeated use of fake tension to make it seem suspenseful. We see things from the protagonist's perspective, so we are unclear (until the end) as to whether she is insane or if the demonic events are actually happening.
Nell ( ), the possessed girl from the first film, is the sole survivor of a blaze that apparently killed her entire family. She is unscathed, although thanks to daylight she seems to have aged about ten years.
This starts with a massacred Roman army,
under the command of Byzantine priests.
This certainly sets the stage for the forthcoming supernatural events.
However, the CGI SPFX make it less than realistic.
In the late 1940s, Merrin (Stellan Staargard - ) is hired by creepy Ben Cross ( First Knight (1995) ) to work on an archaeological dig in East Africa. Somewhere within driving distance of Nairobi, Kenya, they have discovered an ancient Byzantine church. Cross says it is from the year Five, which is of course impossible. Merrin instinctively knows that he means the year Five Hundred, and points out that the idea of a Byzantine church in Kenya is still impossible.
Merrin gets on well with excavation's chaplain (James D'Arcy - Agent Carter ) and the doctor ( Izabella Scorupco ). There is also an excavator, but he is an ugly racist old straight white man.
It turns out that the church was built to contain an ancient evil. Sort of like The Keep , but that was a great film while this was directed by Renny Harlin .
Someone gets possessed, and their face has the look of the classic possession makeup Regan had in The Exorcist (1973) . When Merrin starts the exorcism, the possession victim starts climbing the walls like a cartoonish CGI version of the one in Exorcist 3 (1993) . In other words, this movie has a few surface references but lacks the depth of the Franchise's greats.
This is the infamous sequel to the classic 1970s horror movie.
It is much derided, but is not an entirely terrible film.
It suffers in part to the fact that the original is held in such high regard.
It is several years after the events of the first film. Reagan ( Linda Blair ) is an attractive young teenager, trying to get on with her life. She has to see a psychiatrist ( Louise Fletcher ) for her bad dreams, but on the surface she has gotten over her possession.
An exorcist priest (Richard Burton - Medusa Syndrome ) is assigned to investigate Reagan's exorcism, which was the last case of his mentor. His interviews with her (using a machine with flashing lights that apparently allows people to merge consciousnesses or something) allow the seamless integration of scenes from the original film.
The backstory of the demon is completely different from the other movies in the series. In this it is called Pazuzu (as in the gargoyle from Futurama ). Apparently Pazuzu is the demon of the air, the embodiment of a massive locust. The priest becomes obsessed with the demon, and travels to Ethiopia to find the demon's first victim (James Earl Jones - Conan The Barbarian ).
So what is so bad about it? The actors tend to stare into the camera a lot. Some of the dialogue is particularly dreadful. Also, the musical score by Ennio Morricone is typically overwrought. Worst, Director John Boorman reputedly hated the script.
This starts with a young African-American married couple in Haiti.
The wife dies, but her daughter is saved.
Years later, when the daughter is a teenager, she becomes obsessed with the mother she never knew. She and a school-friend conduct a secret seance, but never return home. The parents call the police, and start a massive search.
The girls end up in hospital. Their neighbour Ann ( Ann Dowd ) is a nurse there, and she is also a former trainee nun. These incredible coincidences allow her to advise the father to look for a supernatural explanation.
The father tracks down Chris ( Ellen Burstyn ), the mother from the first film, and ask for her help. Regan ( Linda Blair ) has left her, but she agrees to help.
The two girls are possessed by demons. As the title suggests, the answer is an exorcism. However, this time the ceremony is interdenominational. Ann the nurse does the Roman Catholic ritual, while the local Pastor (Raphael Sbarge - Once Upon A Time ) represents the reformed Xian faiths. There is also a Black woman from Haiti who represents the Houdun religion, formerly known as Voodoo.
David Gordon Green directed this unnecessary sequel to a 1970s horror masterpiece, after he made the trilogy of unnecessary sequels to Halloween (1978) . This is about the best thing that can be said about it.
This is an unnecessary remake of a 1970s horror classic,
just like so many others that came out around the early 2000s.
Not only does it have the same story and script,
many of the visual shots are virtually identical to the original.
The only real change, except for one spectacular kill scene, is the cast.
A US Diplomat (Liev Shreiber - Scream (1996)< ) and his wife ( Julia Stiles ) have a child. They are complications, and they end up with Damien. Although the pair are competent character actors, and have performed well in dramatic and supporting roles, neither of them is a big A-list leading name. In other words, this remake is high-concept but is not expected to be a vehicle for big stars.
Damien gets a creepy nanny ( Mia Farrow ). The omens of doom are read by a priest (Pete Postlethwaite - ), a photographer (David Thewlis - The Feed ) and an archaeologist (Michael Gambon - Harry Potter ). This leads to a couple of impressive kill scenes, but nothing that the audience have not seen before.
A decade on, the most important thing about this movie is that there is a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance by UK scream queen Myanna Buring .
This is a continuation of the 1970s movies,
made after a gap of over a decade
by people who do not seem to understand that a trilogy only has three parts.
Damien Thorne gets mentioned in passing,
although he has now become an obscure figure..
A lawyer ( Faye Grant ) gives birth to a daughter, who she names Delia. The girl becomes the apple of her father's eye, a man who is becoming successful in local politics.
People become suspicious of Delia, and not just the Catholic Church. One nun has converted and joined an extremist Protestant sect that specialises in the handling of snakes in church. There is also Delia's new age nanny and her friend the psychic photographer (Joe Dawson - Highlander: The Series ). Later, mommy hires a private detective (Ken Lerner - Babylon 5 ).
This has a slightly more female-led take than the original movies, since it is about mother and daughter instead of father and son. However, it has never been held up as a breathtaking example of feminist film-making. Grant does a good job as female lead, following up on her role as action heroine Juliet Parrish on V: The Series . The real let-down is the fact that this movie was produced on a made-for-TV budget in Canada.
