I take on a trio of modern horror films I would never recommend to myself: Stormhouse, Resolution, and Open House.
STORMHOUSE (2011)
Stormhouse is the story of a medium brought to an underground military base to communicate with a supernatural presence that was imprisoned there before the Iraq war.
It’s kind of unfair for me to even talk about this movie. Government…military…war. Pretty much everything I have no interest in seeing in a horror movie. The ghostly entity they have “caged” up (in a paranormal sort of cage) can’t really convince me to get into it.
There’s a whole lot of talking, the medium visits the cage a few times, she starts to form a bond with one of the guys down in the underground base, one of the dudes eventually becomes a sort of portal for the entity (apparent because he will unknowingly break into a chorus of Frerer Jacques at any given moment), and the baddies down in the base (aren’t there always baddies?) toss a few people into the supernatural cage.
And then…one gets out and goes around torturing and killing a people. It’s definitely the best part of the film and gets deliciously gruesome. It’s a pretty dark and gritty film, I just personally cannot relate to the non-supernatural aspects of Stormhouse. But if the combination of war, military, and horror is your thing, I would definitely check this creepy film out.
RESOLUTION (2012)
If you love scary movies yet you’re one of those people that bashed the Evil Dead remake, I give you a movie that will help you better appreciate the jump scares, gore, and demons of the remake. And that movie is Resolution, in which a guy traps his buddy in a cabin to help him kick a drug habit. Sounds familiar, right?
Don’t expect any nail guns or sliced tongues. The two guys talk for an hour and a half and then the movie ends. Okay. I’m exaggerating. An hour into the movie, the helpful friend goes into a cave with a flashlight and a homeless dude screams really loud at him in the dark to provide us with a jump scare so we can pretend this is a horror movie. Plus, there’s a lot of talk about Satanism, cults, aliens, and other scary things that never show up in the film. And eventually, there’s a suggestion that the guys are able to pull a Samara and transfer shit onto video tapes.
Rare case when looking at a still shot from a film
is like watching the entire movie all over again!
I must be getting old, because I can’t keep up with all this Internet jargon. I keep forgetting that when everyone is saying that a horror movie is a different kind of horror film, is smart and makes you think, and people who don’t like it just don’t get it…that’s fancy cyber speak for “Dan will hate this movie!” I went to school for nearly twenty-five years. I’m fricking done thinking! Just scare me!
It’s inexplicable to me that a quote on the front of the Blu-ray from the Village Voice reads, “Puts The Cabin in the Woods to shame.” Resolution isn’t even in the same class as The Cabin in the Woods and shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath.
OPEN HOUSE (2010)
Two of the first people you see in Open House are Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton. Their presence just managed to confuse the fuck out of me so I’d highly suggest you totally ignore their existence in the film because it’s very limited.
The plot is pretty straightforward. A divorced couple is selling their house. While the house is being shown by a real estate agent, one pair of house hunters—an incestuous brother and sister duo—decides not to leave. They imprison the wife in the basement of the house. You’ve pretty much seen this kind of film before. She tries to get away. She fails again and again. People come to the house, she tries to signal them for help, they get murdered. She starts to form a relationship with one of her captors, the other becomes jealous.
And you’ve seen the end a million times. One of the baddies gets away…and a final “shocking” scene shows that person starting the cycle of insanity all over again at a new open house!
If you find straight incest perverse, there’s some interracial lesbianism thrown in to add some normalcy. But you can’t tell me you wouldn’t at least think about banging your brother if he looked like this….
