i'm kael's ghost

Perhaps I was being dense when I decided to take a chance on From Within  - I didn't really make the connection that this would be a religious movie. And before I came to that realization, I was ready to be patient with the simply terrible special effects. Well - I'm not being completely fair to myself here - "possession" movies do come in 3 kinds: The religious kind (where you are possessed by a demon). The ghost story kind (where you're actually "haunted" more than "possessed"). And the psychological break kind (where all the shit you imagine is really just in your head). So the reveal could have turned out to be any of those options. I'm not a religious person and I don't believe in God. (Or god or a goddess or any of those things that religious folks might find semantically different.) Minus that belief, there's very little fear for me in these religious possession movies -  which is why I don't typically dig th...

There are no shortage of horror movies that deal with the inherent terror of impending motherhood. I've jotted a few words in past entries about some of the more famous "motherhood is horrifying" movies out there. Tonight, we'll touch on a few others. Enjoy. Baby Shower - 2011 Watching this movie inspired my need to create this post. The gist: A pregnant woman invites her best friends to visit her at her isolated home (wait for it....) in the jungle? She then throws a fit and accuses ONE OF THEM of having an affair with her husband. And how did she learn of this affair, you ask? Well. Despite not having seen any of these friends for an undisclosed amount of time that is implied to be very long, she heard other women gossiping about it at the local beauty parlor. Now THAT sounds like a legitimate reason to call a meeting in which to hurl accusations at your friends. Then. A random hippy woman shows up and someone starts murdering people. I don't even...

Because I am the most diligent of movie bloggers, I subject myself to a wealth of movies that literally no other human on Earth would (or should) subject themselves to. This past weekend I actually found myself in a most unusual situation: I started two movies that were so bad  I turned them off before finishing them. And I sat through Room 237 ! When I can't make it through a movie, you know it's bad. Really, really bad. I'd love to write a warning about each so that you, my devoted readers, don't accidentally waste your time on them but  they were so bad  that I can only remember one of them. Well, part of a warning is better than no warning, right? Man oh man is that bad horror film logic!  Black Forest The $.25 Version: Made for / by the SyFy Channel , which I didn't know before I tried to watch it. You've got to have some trepidation about a movie that is genre classified as mystery & suspense, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Talk about n...

If  Are You Afraid of The Dark  had a baby with  Law and Order: SVU  and ran around doing an impression of  The Cell  but decided that was only a phase and tried to be The Others instead - well, that baby would be  Haunter . Before I go any further, let me just tell you, this is one of the worst movies I've had to sit through in a long time. The gist of the movie is that a dead girl and her family are trapped in their house. If that plot sounds strikingly familiar, it's likely that you (like me) grew up watching Beetlejuice . Don't get too excited because Haunter has none of the charm or humor that Beetlejuice does. It's also possible that you've just been watching American Horror Story  (AHS). You can get excited by this one, Haunter is as poorly acted and written as AHS. Seriously. The acting was terrible. Even Abigail Breslin  (who is typically regarded as a top-notch actress). My editor has asked that I pause to acknowled...

The supernatural is often the focus of horror movies; from ghosts, to psychics, to demons, to vampires, and so on - people are simply fascinated by that which may be real. Typically, these stories are set up in one of two ways: everyone except the main character believes in the supernatural OR only the main character believes in the supernatural. That means one crucial element of the story is always someone struggling to come to grips with the existence of something they don't believe in. Today we'll be looking at 3 examples from the past few years of people grappling with the supernatural: Red Lights, The Awakening, and The Skeptic. If you're a jaded skeptic, like myself, you'll naturally gravitate to each of the leading roles in today's movies as they fall into the category of, "staunch non-believers." Red Lights - 2012 The $.25 plot overview: a professor and a physicist try to debunk a famous psychic. Turns out the psychic is a fake but the...

You can count The Forgotten among the movies I'm regularly skipping over when choosing something to watch; I've seen the trailers and read the plot summaries and never thought, "Hey! I can't wait to watch this movie." It's not just the boring plot or the stupid trailer. It's actually Julianne Moore . She has so little range as an actress it's nearly laughable. She can play exactly  one character; the hysterical woman. In most cases, including in The Forgotten, I wish she could be someone else. Only once, once! have I wanted her to be an emotional wreck, and she was amazing at it, and that was in Magnolia . Every other time I just wanted to reach into the movie and slap her until she got her shit together. Actually, let's also consider the director: Joseph Ruben - best(?) known for directing The Good Son back in the 90's. I mean - it's not like he's really got a history of running around Hollywood, taking risks and turning out t...

Standard disclaimer: spoilers ahead. Despite the seeming popularity of American Mary , I remain - overall - remarkably unimpressed. I've actually watched this movie twice now and I'm still not feeling the surge of excitement that others seem to feel for it. That's not to say that I hated it - far from it. I just don't get the gobs and gobs of praise people seem to be hurling at it. I mean, whomever said, "most original horror film..." clearly needs a refresher course on the horror genre. (The "big reveal" is nearly the exact same "reveal" as " Audition ." In fact, if you didn't immediately feel like you were watching a re-made or ripped of Japanese horror flick within moments of American Mary's start, you need to turn in your horror-nerd card.) The $.25 overview: Katharine Isabelle  (of  Ginger Snaps fame) stars as her charmingly sardonic (self?) in the tale of a blossoming med student who is raped and then see...