Tag: Horror

Movie Review: HARBINGER DOWN

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

harbinger

It’s not often a movie makes me angry.  I think a recent honour goes to Josh Trank’s inexcusable Fantastic Four effort, but tonight I witnessed something that truly made my blood boil – Harbinger Down, written and directed by special effects technician Alec Gillis.  I actually saw this included in a couple of best of lists, but it got some bad ratings in other places.  Having watched it, I can only think that there are people out there who are so starved for entertainment that they give basically anything a passing grade.  Harbinger Down deserves no plaudits whatsoever.  It’s actually one of the most disgraceful movies I’ve ever seen. Continue reading “Movie Review: HARBINGER DOWN” →

Short Fiction: THIS NIGHT HAS OPENED MY EYES

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Fiction5 Comments

This Night

On the way back from my appointment at the VA, I stopped by this old antique place. A real chintzy little hole in the wall that I ‘d seen umpteen times, but never thought about. I was bored. Didn’t want to go home right away after hearing that the dosage of my meds had to be increased. Depressing. I thought about Sophia and how shitty I had been to her the last time I saw her. I felt bad. I felt bad a lot, for a whole bunch of things. Ever since I got back from Afghanistan nothing seems connected anymore, not like how things used to be. The VA doctor said upping the meds will help me feel like things are still together, not drifting apart. Continue reading “Short Fiction: THIS NIGHT HAS OPENED MY EYES” →

Movie Review: CREEP

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie ReviewsLeave a comment

creep

There’s something so fundamentally flawed about found-footage movies.  I think most people know it, and if they don’t know it, they feel it.  I’m not talking about the unthinking surface-level criticisms of “it’s dumb” or “it gave me motion sickness!”, I’m talking about the phoniness of the actual technique.  I happen to think The Blair Witch Project is one of the greatest horror movies ever made – being as it is also one of the earliest popular examples of the technique, it stands to reason it doesn’t show much of the fatal flaw throughout the later ones, but it exists.  Continue reading “Movie Review: CREEP” →

Movie Review: THE WITCH

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the witch

As someone with a deep attachment to the horror genre I consistently find myself thrilled or disappointed by it – there’s rarely a middle ground for me.  Being a purist, that limits my options even more.  I have no patience for schlock horror, and over reliance on gore is a real turn off for me too, mostly because it eschews the need for strong writing.  I don’t shy away from sub genres, though.  It’s just that the piece itself needs to contain strong characters and a sense of internal logic – once those two boxes are ticked, I’m largely good. Continue reading “Movie Review: THE WITCH” →

Movie Review: MARTYRS (2016)

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martyrs20151

I’m sure you, like me, wonder what the point is in remaking movies.  If a movie was great, what possesses a creative talent to feel it either needs to be updated, or bettered?  If a movie was poor, why not just let it fade into history?  To be sure, I’ve enjoyed a couple of remakes (Let Me In and Funny Games spring to mind), while simultaneously feeling the original was good enough by itself, but for every remake that produces a decent movie, there are many more that are just awful by means of poor realization and needless plot changes.  This kind of “I can do it different/better” thinking leads to work like Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes and RoboCop (2014) – and this is the case with Martyrs .

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