I’d never heard of this movie until I listened to the Hicksploitation episode of the Evolution of Horror podcast. Thankfully, they didn’t include spoilers—if you haven’t seen it, definitely go watch it before proceeding here!
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This film has been incredibly divisive in the horror community, and that’s not surprising. Nothing is going to please everyone—even the near-flawless 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has its detractor(s). I personally enjoyed the newest installment in the franchise, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there’s plenty to take issue with.
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I Blame Society is an absolutely hilarious portrait of a serial killer, like if Henry were the kind of movie you’d want to watch more than once. It isn’t really horror, but it’s got enough nods to the genre (and is available on Shudder), so I’ve got no qualms about including it on the site.
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During the course of this rewatch, I’ve realized that this franchise has some of the worst sequels of all the big horror franchises. Though they are some of the worst movies, especially in comparison to the original 1974 horror treasure, I did enjoy doing most of these rewatches.
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Green Room does so much with such a minimal plot and short runtime. Saulnier’s script is so tight and packed with depth that he makes it look easy. One of the most basic instances of this is the name of the band we’re following—The Ain’t Rights. Such a subtle detail that only really resonates when the nazi venue rebrands them as The Aren’t Rights, which I take as a specifically political action: they “aren’t right,” as in correct, as far as the fascists are concerned. The response to their first song (a cover of the Dead Kennedys “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!”) further underlines this political divide between band and crowd / hosts.
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After listening to a handful of podcasts with lists of the worst to best Friday the 13th movies, most notably Evolution of Horror and With Gourley and Rust, I decided to put my own list together. It’s likely that everyone’s list is different, but what struck me is exactly how different my list is from others. I really go for the self-aware and campy Friday the 13th movies; watching them should be fun—drinking some beers and eating some pizza with friends. So keep that in mind as you go through the list. I think that’s the real metric: how much fun is it?
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Halloween Kills is a narrative and structural mess, jumping back and forth between 1978 and 2018. It expands on what happened after the first Halloween of this reboot series, showing different people’s experiences on those two nights that we hadn’t seen previously, adding characters to the cannon, and trying to establish too many new threads (presumably to connect Halloween (2018) and Halloween Ends). There are plenty of fun moments and interesting callbacks throughout the movie. Unfortunately since so much of the movie is pulling threads from the prior to the forthcoming films, there’s boring plot expansion and exposition—not to mention a clear disinterest in the Strode family.
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There’s some overlap between The Platform and films like Cube: Our protagonist is dropped into a hellish setting from which they’re unable to escape. Not only do they have to figure out the rules for their new environment, but also have to go to some extremes to survive. But Platform’s unique take and specific subtext make it stand out among the others.
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80s period pieces are all the rage nowadays, but Censor takes a much darker approach. It’s not about the fun pop culture of the time and the colorful fashion, it’s about the government crackdowns on artistic expression, which escalated significantly to a moral panic over new forms of media distribution. What about the children?! What if a kid gets their hands on a copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the newest Prince album? In america, the PMRC came for musicians, and in Thatcher’s uk there was an intense regulation of video nasties.
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True to most twist-centered media, everything that happens in the beginning is meant to set up things that build towards the twist so that on rewatch it all adds up. The acting is really quite bad. It’s almost a parody of conversation, and the character’s quirks set up everything that happens in this movie, so they just feel unnatural and awkward. Shyamalan consistently takes his films way too seriously for what he actually produces. The first 30 minutes of the movie is like watching robots interact. Every sentence is there to advance the plot.
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Eyes Glued Reviews 