Tag: Horror

Short Fiction: COLD WIND TO VALHALLA

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Fiction2 Comments

Blazing camp fire at night with orange flames reaching into the sky on an outdoor vacation of adventure and exploration

Like everyone around him, Eddie stood looking up at the TV.  The mood inside Stornoway Airport was a palpable mix of despair and fear that seeped into the very bones and grew like mold.  Even though it was only 4:30pm local time, it had grown dark outside the small terminal, and rain lashed against the windows.  Eddie looked around at the passengers who had traveled with him from Glasgow on the short, turbulent flight.  A tall man comforted his wife and two small children, three teens with earbuds stared vacantly at up the news reader.  The elderly couple who had sat across from him on the plane were locked into a silent debate, pinched mouths making the shapes of words that Eddie couldn’t hear.

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Movie Review: VAMPYRES (2015) – remake that’s light on depth and heavy on languid lesbian softcore. If that’s your thing, go for it!

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie ReviewsLeave a comment

vampyres

If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a shitty vampire movie.  I’ve gone over this before in my reviews of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Only Lovers Left Alive, and What We Do In The Shadows, all three of which are very good additions to the subgenre.  These movies are all very different to each other, with vampires being one of the only two elements that connects them.  This is the sign of a very flexible subgenre within horror, something I hadn’t explicitly considered before, though in saying that, I have maintained for years that horror itself is perhaps the most flexible of any of the genres.  I feel that there are very few aspects of the human condition that cannot be explored within it, and it is my preferred genre to write in exactly because of that.

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Movie Review: SHELLEY – low-key Danish horror with good performances, but runs out of steam at the end.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

shelley-poster-1

I don’t speak Danish, so part of this is on me, I suppose.  I’m guessing that the likelihood of anyone reading this understanding Danish is sufficiently low for me to say that I would have turned the movie off due to lack of comprehension … the trouble with Shelley is that the movie is mostly in English, so I naturally expected that to continue.  That turns out not to be the case, so the third act continues in unsubtitled format – at least the copy I was watching.  It isn’t a total deal breaker, as the narrative is conveyed well enough by the visuals and direction.  Nevertheless, it would have been nice to have understood the spare dialogue that comes in the third act.

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Movie Review: DON’T BREATHE – Doesn’t live up to over-hyped expectations, but worth watching.

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dontbreathegothicposter

I’m not exactly sure when or why I started disliking Stephen Lang.  I haven’t seen a lot of his work, and I didn’t recall him being in Manhunter all those years ago, but there was one movie I actually hated him in, or a TV show, or something.  No idea, though.  I know it was before Avatar, a movie that most people now, thankfully, regard as being mostly crap.  I think it’s something stupid, like his face.  I always have this feeling that he looks childish and petulant whenever I see him – like I said, stupid.  And it’s because of him specifically that I avoided watching Don’t Breathe.  I won’t go out of my way to never watch a movie Lang is in, though – the only moviemaker I refuse to watch these days is Kevin Smith, and my dislike of Lang is nowhere near that bad.  Whatever.  I ended up watching Don’t Breathe at the weekend, so here we are. Continue reading “Movie Review: DON’T BREATHE – Doesn’t live up to over-hyped expectations, but worth watching.” →

Movie Review: LIGHTS OUT – another vengeful female ghost movie, with an interesting premise undone by lack of scares.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

lights-out-poster-image

What is it with Hollywood’s propensity to use the “evil/vengeful female ghost” archetype?  Offhand I can think of Mama, Crimson Peak, both Conjuring movies (technically, the nun in The Conjuring 2 isn’t a ghost, I know), The Woman In Black, The Grudge, etc.  There are male ghosts in movies too, but if you bet on the gender of the spirit in any upcoming ghost-themed horror movie, you’d get long odds on male.  Such is the case with Lights Out, a movie that promises a lot more than it actually delivers.

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