Category Archives: Horror

Horror Film Review: Final Destination 2 (dir by David R. Ellis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I rewatched Final Destination, I watched it’s sequel, 2003’s Final Destination 2.

Final Destination 2 is not only one of the best horror sequels ever made but it’s also the film that, even more than the first installment of the series, established what we consider to be a typical Final Destination film.  The characters are far more eccentric and the deaths are far more elaborate.  Death itself shows a sense of humor that wasn’t present in the first Final Destination film.  If you manage to escape Death the first time, Death isn’t just going to track you down.  It’s going to play without and have some fun before it finally fills its quota.

Final Destination 2 opens with Kimberly Corman (AJ Cook) having a vision of a crash on the interstate.  She’s so freaked out by her vision that she blocks the entrance ramp.  This may save the life of everyone stalled behind her but it also ends up killing all of her friends when a truck smashes into her SUV.  Fortunately, Kimberly survives because she had gotten out of the vehicle to talk to a policeman named Thomas Burke (Michael Landes).

So, the bad news is that all of Kimberly’s friends are dead.

The good news is that Kimberly has a whole new group of friends, all of the people who were supposed to die on that highway but who are now alive and on Death’s do-over list as a result of Kimberly’s actions.

Along with Kimberly and Thomas, Death now has to take care of lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetaku), stoner Rory (Jonathan Cherry), neurotic chainsmoker Kat (Keegan Tracy Connor), teacher Eugene Dix (T.C. Carson), and Nora (Lynda Boyd) and her son, Tim (James Kirk).  It turns out that Death is not only after them because they didn’t die on the highway but also because they all have a connection to the deaths that occurred in the first Final Destination.  It’s actually a pretty clever idea and it also provides an excuse for Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) to return from the first film and act as a sort of death guru.

Needless to say, the deaths are elaborate.  In fact, they’re so elaborate that Final Destination 2 occasionally feels like a satirical take on the first film.  It’s not just that Nora loses her head in an elevator accident.  It’s that there just happens to be an old man carrying a box full of claws on the elevator.  In another scene, Rory looks inside a closet and sees hundreds of things that could possibly kill him, my favorite being the bowling ball that just happens to be precariously balanced on the top shelf.  When Clear Rivers returns, she doesn’t just explain how death works.  She also gives them a list of safety precautions that make her sound like an overly protective parent, looking at her son or daughter’s apartment and freaking out over how many appliances have been plugged into one outlet.

Final Destination 2 is a clever film with an appropriately dark and macabre sense of humor.  On the one hand, all of the characters are well-written and the cast is so likable that you don’t want to see any of them die.  On the other hand, Death is so inventive that it’s hard not to want to see what it has up its sleeve.  And, like the first film, the sequel works because it gets at a universal truth.  You can avoid death but can never truly escape it.

Horror Film Review: Final Destination (dir by James Wong)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was recently rewatching the 2000 film, Final Destination, and a few things occurred to me.

Number one, no one ever really thanks Devon Sawa for getting them off that plane before it explodes.  Final Destination opens with a group of high school students boarding a plane so that they can go on their senior class trip to Paris.  (I wish I had gone to their high school.  Our senior class trip was to …. well, we didn’t get one.)  When Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) has a vision of the plane exploding, he freaks out and he, his teacher, and a few other students are kicked off the plane.  Needless to say, everyone’s pretty upset with Alex but then, just a few minutes after taking off, the plane does explode.  Alex was right.  He saved everyone’s lives.

And yet, no one ever says, “Thank you, Alex!”  Instead, everyone is still like, “Hey, that’s the weirdo that ruined our trip to Paris!”  No, the plane exploding is what ruined your trip to Paris.  Alex saved your life!  Poor Alex.  And yet, it kind of makes sense.  In the face of inexplicable tragedy, people need someone to blame and Alex is a convenient scapegoat.

That scapegoating continues once the survivors of the flight start to mysteriously die.  No one wants Alex near them, even though Alex has managed to figure out that Death is stalking them because they messed up its plans by getting off of that plane.  Then again, Alex doesn’t always come across as if he’s the most stable person in the world.  Gaunt and hallow-eyed, Sawa portrays Alex as someone who haunted by survivor’s guilt even before it became obvious that he and his former friends were being targeted.  Sawa, it should be said, gives a remarkably good performance in Final Destination.

Another thing that occurred to me as I rewatched Final Destination is that, in this film, Death doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.  The Final Destination sequels are notorious for their elaborate and often ironic death scenes, the majority of which seem to indicate that Death might be a little bit too clever and precocious for its own good.  However, in the first Final Destination, Death is a lot more direct and, in some ways, a lot more sadistic.  Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) steps out in the street and gets run over by a bus.  Goofy Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott — why two n’s Seann!?) makes the mistake of standing too close to the railroad tracks and he loses the top half of his head.  Death really only get creative when it comes to taking out Todd Waggner (Chad E. Donella) and Ms. Lewton (Kristen Cloke) and, even then, it’s methods are nowhere near as elaborate as they would eventually become.

The final thing that I noticed is that Final Destination holds up really well.  It’s hard to remember now but, when Final Destination first came out, a lot of critics dismissed it as just being a slasher film with a slightly clever twist.  But actually, that twist is far more than just “slightly” clever and the film really does a lot more with the idea than it’s often given credit for.  Final Destination is a film full of thrills and chills — I still freak out at some of those death scenes — but it’s also a film that always makes me think about mortality.  Has our destiny already been written?  Can we defeat death?  Or are we just pawns with our fates predetermined?  In the end, that’s what makes Final Destination so effective.  We all know that we can’t escape death, both in real life and in the movies.  The one thing that everyone has in common is that death is eventually going to come for all of us.  It’s the one enemy that we can’t defeat or laugh away.  Instead, all we can do is try to hold it off for a while.  Final Destination taps into the fears that we all have.

The plot is clever.  The script is frequently witty.  I liked the fact the characters were all named after horror movie icons.  Plus, you got Tony Todd dominating the entire film with just a brief role.  Final Destination is a classic.

Horror on the Lens: Manos: The Hands of Fate (dir by Harold P. Warren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

torgo

I should start things off with a confession.  This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens.  I previously shared it on both October 8th of 2013 and October 15th of 2015 and, both times, I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.

However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again.  As I pointed out two years ago, Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made.  And, honestly, who am I to disagree?  However, it’s also a film that is so bad that it simply has to be seen.

By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds.  What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped.  So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.

And be sure to enjoy Manos: The Hands of Fate!

Here’s The Trailer for Porno!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My friend Jason says this is a great film so I’ll share the trailer, despite the fact that YouTube is probably going to start recommending some crazy stuff to me now.

The film is apparently about some theater employees who watch a cursed pornographic movie and then have to deal with a succubus.  These things happen.  One the one hand, moving to video from film did adversely effect the quality of the films being released by the adult film industry.  At the same time, it also led to less supernatural curses.  Everything has a price.

Anyway, here’s the trailer.  Google’s recommending porn to me now.

Music Video of the Day: It’s A Sin by The Pet Shop Boys (1987, directed by Derek Jarman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

For all the analysis that has been dedicated to this song and Neil Tennant’s reasons for writing it, Tennant himself has said that the song itself isn’t as a serious as everyone makes it out to be.  As he explained it in a 2009 interview with Andrew Sullivan:

“People took it really seriously; the song was written in about 15 minutes, and was intended as a camp joke and it wasn’t something I consciously took very seriously. Sometimes I wonder if there was more to it then I thought at the time. But the local parish priest in Newcastle delivered a sermon on it, and reflected on how the Church changed from the promise of a ghastly hell to the message of love.”

Not surprisingly, the video is full of religious imagery, along with representations of the seven deadly sins.  In the video, Tennant’s fellow Pet Shop Boy, Chris Lowe, plays Tennant’s jailer while the judge is played by the distinguished British actor Ron Moody.  An Oscar nominee for playing Fagin in 1968’s Oliver!, Ron Moody also came very close to being cast as the Third Doctor on Doctor Who.  Though the role was offered to him, Moody turned it down to focus on his film career.  Instead, Moody’s friend, Jon Pertwee, received the role and Moody would often later say that the decision to turn down Doctor Who was one of his biggest mistakes.

This video was directed by Derek Jarman, the experimental British director who is perhaps best known for his adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II.  A political activist and a pioneer in the British gay rights movement, Jarman would sadly pass away just seven years after directing the video but he left behind a body of work that continues to be influential to this day.  Along with directing Laurence Olivier in his final performance (in War Requiem), Jarman is also often credited with having “discovered” Tilda Swinton.

It’s A Sin was one of the Pet Shops Boys’s biggest hits.  Would it have been a hit without this video?  Probably.  But the video definitely didn’t hurt.

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 2.14 “Make Me Not A Witch” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond, Emmy (Patty McCormack) makes the mistake of telling her parents (Eileen Ryan and Leo Penn) that she can read minds.  Needless to say, the news does not go over as well as Emmy might have hoped.  Her parents have a farm to run!  The last thing they need is a witch in their midst!

Emmy runs to the church and prays, “Make me not a witch!”

But what if the world needs a witch?

As with every episode of One Step Beyond, this episode is supposedly based on fact.  Patty McCormack is best-remembered for her Oscar-nominated performance in The Bad Seed while Eileen Ryan and Leo Penn are best remembered as being the parents of Sean and Chris Penn.

This episode originally aired on December 22nd, 1959.

Enjoy!

Witchcraft 15: Blood Rose (2016, directed by David Palmieri)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I’m nearly done reviewing Witchcraft films and it’s not a moment too soon.  Because nearly every single installment has shared the same weaknesses (and the same “strengths”), I’m running out of things to say about them.  Even though I appreciate the franchise’s attempts to maintain a loose continuity over the course of 16 films and nearly 20 years, it can still be difficult to remember which Witchcraft was which.  When did Lutz go to London?  I think that was Witchcraft X.  When was Will dead?  That was Witchcrafts VII, VIII, and IX.  But don’t ask me what happened in Witchcraft V or VI.  It’s all just one big blur of softcore sex and needlessly complex rituals.

Witchcraft 15 picks up right where Witchcraft 14 ended.  Witchcraft 15 even opens by reshowing us the final ten minutes of Witchcraft 14, albeit with scenes of a lesbian witch ritual spliced in.  Samuel, the warlock yoga instructor, has been vanquished.  Sharon (Noel VanBrocklin) has taken over the yoga coven and, because Sharon’s managed to convince everyone that she wasn’t really that involved with Samuel’s attempts to bring the Angel of Death out of Hell, young witch Rose (Molly Dougherty), takes a job at the studio.  However, Sharon is still up to her old tricks so she occasionally possesses Rose’s body so that she can steal the souls of other witches and ultimately bring Samuel back to life.  It makes no sense but, after you’ve seen enough of these movies, you learn to tolerate incoherence.

Detectives Lutz and Garner (Berta Roberts and LeRoy Castanon) are again investigating all of the mysterious deaths that are occurring because of the latest witch scheme.  Will (Ryan Cleary) shows up to help them with the investigation.  Will is no longer conflicted about his heritage or his past and he now moves around and talks like he’s the star of his own show on the CW.  It all leads to another needlessly complex ceremony and a magical showdown.

Witchcraft 15 is stupid and trashy but it’s a Witchcraft film so that’s to be expected.  Ryan Cleary is still not a convincing Will and even Lutz and Garner’s trademark banter feels forced.  I do think that Rose and the yoga studio could have been interesting if the film was actually interested in any of that but Witchcraft 15 is ultimately just about getting the witches naked and cashing in on whatever nostalgia direct-to-video hounds might have for the Witchcraft franchise.

I’ve got one one more of these to go.  Tomorrow — Witchcraft 16!

Game Review: The Call of Innsmouth (2020, Tripper McCarthy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The game is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition.  All of the entries can be played here!

You are a private detective, working out of Arkham, Massachusetts.  Arkham is a town that’s notorious for its many mysteries.  The locals say that it is a town that’s been touched by the paranormal but you’re a detective.  You deal with the real world.  When a distraught mother hires you to find her missing son, you think that it will just be a routine case.  Instead, it leads you to the decaying port town of Innsmouth, a place that makes even Arkham look normal!

A prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Call of Innsmouth has all the elements that you would expect from a Lovecraft game.  There’s a trip to Miskatonic University.  There are references to cults, Cthulhu, and the search for ancient and maddening knowledge.  You can even chose to read the Necronomicon if you’re so inclined.  The game warns you not to read it but ultimately, the choice is yours.  Don’t worry though.  If you go crazy or get sacrificed, you always have the option to go back and make a different and hopefully better decision.  That’s a choice that most Lovecraft heroes don’t get.

I enjoyed this Twine game.  The Cthulhu mythos are always good source material for Interactive Fiction and The Call of Innsmouth does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of one of Lovecraft’s stories.  The Call of Innsmouth is a mystery and a game worth exploring.

It can be played here.