Once in a while, you have a good streak on a weekend—one satisfying movie after another, even if they are all in completely different horror subgenres. Actually, that’s kind of what makes it even more satisfying, as with these three: a horror comedy, a found footage flick, and a werewolf film.
HOUSEBOUND (2014)
Housebound is the perfect blend of spot-on horror comedy, scares, and mystery. A chick is put under house arrest, which means she’s stuck in her home with her annoying mother. Her mother who believes the house is haunted. And pretty soon, so does our little inmate.
Crazy supernatural shit begins to happen, complete with a scary doll, demonic Teddy bear….
jump scare Jesus, and even a cute, bearish neighbor who is totally into helping hunt down the ghost…or whatever the hell it is that is haunting the walls of the house.
Which means delving into the dark history of the building….
Mix The Conjuring with the Black Christmas remake and sprinkle it with a comic twist and awesome cast and you’ve got Housebound. And keep an eye out for a clone of the couch quilt from the TV show Roseanne.
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW (2014)
As Above, So Below is a found footage film that redeems itself from a miserable, endless pit of the subgenre’s clichés during the final act.
Personally, my favorite film about the millions of dead bodies underneath Paris is still the flick Catacombs. The chick in that flick had no intentions of being down there. Our leading lady here not only keeps digging herself into deeper, more claustrophobic The Descent-esque catacombs—she drags a group of her friends along with her. Her goal is to find some stone that is believed to bring you life eternal.
You’d think any idiots would realize that if they don’t find that damn stone down there, they can cut short their already limited lifespan. I spent over an hour not feeling bad for them getting stuck and hurt and buried under rocks. Hell, I stopped caring the second they get down in the catacombs and don’t turn back upon seeing a chanting cult. They even do stupid “You are dead” video game crap like trying to solve a cryptic puzzle that promises you only one chance to get it right, or else. Fucking dipshits.
On top of that, a huge part of the film lacks any horror. Friends fight with each other. Tight tunnel-traveling footage looks like a colonoscopy….
There’s not one designated cameraman—apparently they all have cameras on because a character will seem to just completely disappear until you realize the POV has been switched suddenly to that person’s camera. Which makes you wonder how they spliced together footage from the cameras of people who never make it back.
Eventually…and it’s a pretty long eventuality…we get classic, in-your-face found footage monster jump scares galore! Things finally go to hell in a good way. And it’s delicious, nightmarish horror you get from video games like Silent Hill. Plus, it provokes some thought. It might seem like a “religious” theme, but it’s actually a more philosophical—and logical—concept about life and the power we ourselves have to make it a good one or hell on earth.
WER (2013)
If you’re a big werewolf fan and have been waiting for something different, Wer is the way to go.
After a family is brutally torn apart while camping, a weird, excessively tall and hairy local man is arrested. Scream queen A.J. Cook plays a lawyer who steps in to represent him because she believes he is being framed and that the actual killer was some sort of animal.
Wer begins as a very character-driven mystery, but as the lawyer and her small team investigate, they start to suspect the full moon has a whole lot to do with the attack…which leads to a few too many scenes of them being allowed to follow the police to places they would never be able to in actuality. And so begins some delicious werewolf insanity—blood, gore, violence, action, horror, hair. Rather than go the “big bad wolf” route of modern horror like Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers, Wer actually brings the classic “wolfman” lycanthrope into the new millennium. Good stuff.
Nice! I’ve been wanting to check out all three of these, now more so than before.
Pingback: Digging through the DVR - 4 the fun of it - BOYS, BEARS & SCARESBOYS, BEARS & SCARES