Halloween Movie Month - 2014: Final Post

2nd place costume competition

Another October has come and gone, and with it, Halloween has now passed.  If you've been following me for the past few weeks, you know that I've been trying to post a review of a Halloween movie every night for the month of October.  Even though I wasn't actually able to post every night, I did pretty well with posting about every other night for most of the month.  But, as Halloween drew closer and closer, I started finding myself being busier and busier working on costumes, prepping my beard for the beard competition at work, and getting ready for CONjuration Con with New Monster Project.

1st place beard competition

Hagrid at CONjuration Con

I had plans to end out the month with something a little bigger - maybe 5 movies that I give a rating of at least a 4.5.  Two of the movies that I watched and started reviews for were Night of the Living Dead and The Shining.  Along with those two movies, I was also going to review corresponding documentaries.  With Night of the Living Dead was Birth of the Living Dead and with The Shining was Room 237.

I know it is a little late to watch them now to watch them in preparation for Halloween.  But, there is no reason why you can't watch them to help close out the Halloween season on a horror high note before prepping for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Rather than providing a full review right now, let me just say that Night of the Living Dead and The Shining are absolutely must-see!  In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that they are a buy.  Birth of the Living Dead was incredibly interesting and I highly recommend adding it to your Netflix queue.  Room 237 was interesting, but it was just other people's speculations about The Shining - none of the people involved in the movie were actually a part of the documentary.  Room 237 was interesting enough to see, but I would put it much lower on the queue.  I will post full reviews at a later date (possibly a much later date), but for now, go watch The Shining and Night of the Living Dead!  If you have extra time, watch the corresponding documentaries.

Until next year, I hope you've had an amazing October and enjoyed Halloween Movie Month!!


Be sure to check back soon for more reviews!  In the meantime, leave comments on this (or any other) post, follow me here and on twitter (@GargyleReviews), and let me know what movies you'd like for me to review!



- The Gargyle

Halloween Movie Month: Carrie

Carrie (2013)
Netflix instant

The 2013 Carrie remake follows pretty much the exact same plot line as the original - an awkward teen with an overly religious mother is tormented at school until she discovers that she has telekinetic powers.  Since the remake follows so closely to the original, and since I just watched the original a week ago, it is unavoidable that this review will be more of a comparison between the two.  As a result, most of my comments will be direct responses to what I liked (and didn't like) from the original.

One of my complaints with the original was that there was such a stark dichotomy between the excessive religiosity of Carrie's mother and the evil of Chris Hargensen.  In the original, there was no balance between evil and zealot.  While I understand the literary and thematic reasons for having those extremes, I still did not like how there was no middle ground.  In the 2013 version, Carrie herself is presented as that middle ground.  She still has a very strong sense of religiosity, but in the first interaction between Carrie and her mother, Carrie corrects her mother by telling her that what she (the mother) is saying is not from the Bible.  While I do like that there is a middle ground that is being presented, I actually don't think that it works very well for that middle ground to be Carrie.  In the original, Sissy Spacek play awkward, underdeveloped, and tormented so well - it makes sense that she would act the way she does as a result of being raised alone by her religious zealot mother.  In the 2013 version, Carrie starts out a little too confident.  She almost seems too "normal" to have been raised in such an environment.  Something else that helped to bring some balance was the portrayal of Carrie's mother having some psychological issues (several scenes of her cutting herself), rather than just being portrayed as overly religious.

As far as the evil of Chris, I actually think that the original portrayal showed more evil.  Sure, the remake has her cutting the throat of the pig to gather the blood for the infamous prom scene.  But, there seems to be hesitation.  She doesn't seem as confidently and immediately as malicious.  Although she did not actually touch the pig in the original, the sense of pleasure that she exhibited during the killing of the pig appeared to me to be much more immediate and intense.  In other words, even though she killed the pig, it didn't seem to me like she enjoyed it all that much.  Whereas in the original, even though she did not kill the pig, she seemed to enjoy it terribly.

One of my biggest complaints about the original is that it spent too much time with the side story of what the other girls were planning to do with Carrie, rather than on Carrie's actual story.  The 2013 version definitely showed a lot more character development of Carrie, as well as a lot more interaction between Carrie and her mother.  Even though I think that Carrie started out a little too normal, I am very glad that there was more of the movie actually showing her character development.

In the original, I felt as though much of the music was almost too descriptive.  In the remake, there was more of a unified theme running throughout the score.  However, there was nothing that really made it stand out.  So, although it was unified, it became more of just a forgettable background soundtrack.  Also, there was a bit too much foreshadowing.  This would have been fine if there had been a few more drastic differences between the original and the remake.  However, since the remake stuck so closely to the script of the original, it was less of foreshadowing and more of "you already know what's about to happen, but we are going to give a little nod to that."

I think that Chloe Grace Moretz is an amazing actor and I think that she definitely brought a lot of respect to the role, while also making the character her own.  However, Sissy Spacek's portrayal of a tormented teen is just so iconic - it's hard to top it!  In the original, Sissy Spacek's portrayal of Carrie at the end of the prom scene is so disturbingly creepy because it seems as though she has lost control and is almost comatose with her powers.  She stands completely still, eyes as wide as they can be, and simply looks at the objects to control them.  In the remake, the horror is a bit more visual.  Chloe Grace Moretz portrays Carrie as having much more control and intention with her powers.  She moves around more and is more interactive with her powers.  Rather than simply flipping Chris's car when she is about to be run over, Carrie actually seeks out Chris and her boyfriend.  A lot more deaths are actually shown, but that doesn't make it any less creepy.  It just plays more on the gruesomeness of death, rather than the psychological horror of it.  This is especially clear in the final scene.  One of the things that was so haunting to me, and one of the things that I loved so much about the original, was that it showed the after-effects of Sue losing her mind as a result of seeing so many of her friends die.  In the remake, she does not appear to have any lasting effects of witnessing such a trauma.

Rating/Recommendation:  3/5.  There are some things that I think the remake definitely improved upon.  However, there were a lot of decisions that I felt were missteps and that did not work as well as the original.  I still really enjoyed Carrie (2013) and I would definitely watch it again.  The remake had more development of Carrie and her mother, and there was more death and destruction in the prom scene.  But, the original was just so much creepier and had much more psychological horror at the end - especially in the way that Sissy Spacek played that terrified terror.  I think that the 2013 version is still enjoyable and is worth adding to your queue.  However, if I were to show Carrie to someone who had never seen it before, I would most definitely go with the original version.


Be sure to check back soon for more reviews in Halloween Movie Month!  In the meantime, leave comments on this (or any other) review, follow me here and on twitter (@GargyleReviews), and let me know what movies you'd like for me to review for Halloween Movie Month!



- The Gargyle

Halloween Movie Month: Carrie

Carrie (1976)
Netflix instant

Even though I love movies, there are a bunch of classics that I am embarrassed to say that I have never seen before.  Carrie is one of those movies.  Carrie is also one of those movies that everyone knows the plot to.  I seriously cannot remember a time when I did not know what happens at the end of Carrie.  While that does take away some of the surprise of what happens, I still enjoy seeing the how of what happens - what leads up to the dramatic end.  Also, I really want to see the remake because it looks like it is awesome!...and I wanted to see the original before the remake.

Even though everyone knows the plot of Carrie and it is almost 40 years old, let me go ahead and say that there will be some spoilers below.  If you have never seen Carrie and have somehow managed to go 40 years without any hearing any spoilers, scroll to the bottom of the page to see my rating and recommendation.  Otherwise, continue reading.

One of the things that struck me was that Carrie's mother, who played a large part in Carrie's developmental delays, was a religious zealot.  I don't like the fact that the only two characters who show any sense of religion are Carrie and her zealot mother.  It plays on the stereotype that Christians are wackos and not to be trusted.  Unfortunately, there are some people out there who do live up to that stereotype.  But, there are also plenty of people out there who are good examples of what Christians are supposed to be (since I am just focusing on the movie right now, I will not be addressing the theological and philosophical perspectives that go into what actually makes a good Christian).  I wish that Carrie had at least one other character to present some sort of balance.  But, the imbalance and extremism are also literary and filmatic techniques to emphasize dichotomies.  In Carrie, that dichotomy is between the innocent and naive Carrie and the pure evil of Chris Hargensen. The character of Chris might seem like just a bully at the beginning, but the scene where John Travolta's character kills a pig to get the blood they will later dump on Carrie - she seems to get a very sick sense of satisfaction from the brutality.

My biggest complaint is that it felt like more of the movie focused on the plot of what the other girls were planning to do to Carrie, rather than on Carrie's actual story.  Sissy Spacek does a great job, but I would have loved to have seen more of her progression and character development.  To go from abused and tormented under the stairs and living in fear, to standing up to her mother - there was a huge amount of character development that goes largely unseen.

I also have a few smaller complaints.  The music is almost too descriptive.  It's either very clearly calm, psychotic, or confusion, but I don't really hear many themes running through the different pieces of music.  I wish that there had been a more unifying theme throughout all of the music.  Also, the detention scene didn't really seem to fit the tone of the movie.  It felt like the humor was a little too forced in this scene.  I think that it would have been a better fit for movies like Revenge of the Nerds or Porky's.

Rating & recommendation:  3.5.  Carrie is a classic and is required viewing for any fan of horror.  To be such an iconic horror movie though, there isn't any actual horror for the majority of the movie.  If this was the first time that you had ever seen the movie and you had no idea about the iconic prom scene, then the ending of the movie would get seriously creepy pretty quick.  Also, even though there aren't too many deaths that are actually shown, there is the implication that so many high schoolers die a fiery death.  But, the blood and the gore is not why Carrie has become such a classic.  Like many of Stephen King's stories, it is the psychological aspects that really play up the horror.  It might seem like the end scene of Sue having a nightmare is unnecessary.  However, that does what so few horror movies do...it shows some of the psychological trauma that the victims suffer, long after the source of horror has been removed.

Side notes:

• The movie is definitely rated R.  The second scene in the movie is in the girls locker room with lots of full-frontal nudity.  That scene also makes it very clear that the movie is from the 70s.  
• I thought that two of the characters looked familiar - and I was right!  Tommy Ross looked like the Greatest American Hero and one of the background girls looked like the secretary from Ferris Beuler's Day Off - I was right on both accounts.

Be sure to check back soon for more reviews in Halloween Movie Month!  In the meantime, leave comments on this (or any other) review, follow me here and on twitter (@GargyleReviews), and let me know what movies you'd like for me to review for Halloween Movie Month!



-The Gargyle

Halloween movie month: Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn (1984)
Netflix, instant
2.5/5

Basic plot:  Under the direction of the charismatic boy preacher, Isaac, the children of a small town in Gatlin, Nebraska are led to murder all the adults in town and to worship "he who walks behind the rows."  A young couple traveling through the country has a run-in with one of the children trying to escape the town, and they are drawn into the affairs of the young cult.

I have to admit that this is the first time that I've ever seen Children of the Corn.  It is important for me to admit that, because I think that it plays a major role in my review, especially in regards to the expectations that I had going into this.  Stephen King is a master of horror, and Children of the Corn has definitely had a cultural impact ever since it's release.  So I went into this with somewhat elevated expectations.  Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations.

Some of the narration in the very beginning worked to help establish the setting, in the same way that reading the opening pages of a story help to establish the setting before any actual dialogue.  But once the dialogue kicks in, the narration didn't work so well.  And this was highlighted pretty early when the narration says that a character is scared, and then the character's line of dialogue is "I'm scared."

The opening murders in the cafe aren't all that scary, or gruesome.  But, the attitude and demeanor of the kids is what is so scary.  They seem to do it so naturally and without remorse.  Almost as if they had been reading Lord of the Flies nightly for as long as they've been able to read.  And to me, that is part of what makes Children of the Corn so creepy.  I've always thought that things that can actually happen are much more terrifying than figments of the imagination.  And a group of people blindly following a charismatic leader to slaughter those who do not fit into their view of the way things should be...that is something that can definitely actually happen.

Since all the adults in the town have been murdered, obviously the majority of the cast is children.  And some of the child acting wasn't all that great.  But the role of Isaac was played very well, which actually makes him a bit more terrifying, because who would expect a kid to play an evil preacher so naturally.  The first time you see him, outside of the cafe when the adults are about to be killed, you say to yourself "well, that kid is just plain creepy."  But then, I was doing my research on IMDB.com afterwards, and realized that the actor who played Isaac (John Franklin) was actually around 25 when Children of the Corn was made.  So, he was just a more mature actor, and not an eerily naturally creepy kid.

There were two very different types of music throughout the movie.  One was typical 80s horror movie music, and the other was a more operatic, monk-like singing/chanting.  I didn't care much for the 80s horror music.  Especially since the chanting/singing not only fit in much better with the cult feel of the children, but also has a more timeless feel to it.  I really wish that all of the music in the film had been more like the chanting.

Towards the end of the film, things take a turn for the supernatural.  Even though there is the assumption that Isaac and Malachi (Courtney Gains) are evil, the majority of the film doesn't really emphasize the supernatural.  It primarily focuses on the creepy kids and what could happen in a society run by children, much like Lord of the Flies.  And to me, a society of murderous kids is creepy enough.  If the supernatural had played a bigger role throughout the film, it would have worked a lot better.  But as it was, it was a bit of a deus ex machina explanation as to why the kids were so evil.

Recommendation:  I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I actually did.  I mean, I really wanted to like this movie.  This movie is one of the ones that has become so much a part of culture that just about everyone, whether they've seen it or not, knows that referring to a kid as being a child of the corn means that there is something not quite right, and a bit creepy, about the kid.  So, I was expecting this film to have more of an impact.  I wanted it to be the kind of creepy that stays with you and makes you feel uneasy walking past middle schools for fear that they will rebel.  But, I think that the idea of the film is much scarier than the actual presentation.  And I have a feeling that the original Stephen King story is probably much scarier than the movie, because you just have the idea and you don't have the presentation or the bad acting to get in the way of Isaac, Malachi, and the mindless child cult.  I've not actually read the story though, so I don't have anything to actually compare it to...just speculation.  As far as the plot of the movie, there is too much that is unexplained.  And that which is explained, doesn't actually really explain much.  For instance, the inclusion of the supernatural explains why the kids are evil (at least, it sort of explains it).  But, it never actually explains why the evil chose that town.  Or why no one over the age of 18 could be allowed to live.  Or why they think that their plan to defeat the evil will actually work.  There are just too many plot holes.  Even though Children of the Corn has made a cultural impact, and even though the character of Isaac is played really well, I'm going to have to say that this is a pass.  It's right on the line though.  Based solely on entertainment value (especially seeing it now, rather than when it first came out), it's a pass.  But, based on the cultural impact and some of the ideas presented, it's a rent.  You won't be missing too much if you don't see it, but you also won't be miserable if you do watch it.  So, I guess the recommendation depends more on your intentions for watching it.  Per my comment at the beginning of the post about how my expectations played a major role in my review...I think that I might have given it a slightly higher rating/recommendation (though, probably not significantly higher) if I would've had lower expectations for it.  But, as it is, the character of Isaac is actually one of the only reasons it's as high as it is.

Side note:  it can be difficult to walk the line between making those with any sort of religion look like ignorant townsfolk, and showing that going over the top and blindly following what others tell you to do is very dangerous.  The majority of Children of the Corn has a "religion = ignorant" feel to it.  But towards the end, one of the characters says "any religion without love and compassion is false."


Be sure to check back soon for another review in Halloween movie month.

-GR