Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
There was no way I was going to miss this movie – for two reasons, actually. The first being that my daughter usually beats me to the punch on new releases and I needed to see this one before she did just cuz. The second being Alex Garland. Now, I haven’t seen most of Garland’s work, but I liked Dredd a lot, despite it mostly being a RoboCop movie in disguise, and I flat out loved Ex Machina., which was, if memory serves, my favourite movie of 2015.
Literally, everyone I knew who had seen Netflix’s The Ritual urged me to watch it. Not one person had anything bad to say about it – I was planning on watching it anyway just from catching the trailer, which intrigued me, but mostly because while watching that same trailer, I felt I was seeing a few already familiar movies. I finally got around to viewing it, and it turned out mostly as I expected: good, but far from great, for a number of reasons.
Immodestly, I have a pretty wide knowledge of what’s considered “black magic” – it’s been an interest of mine since my very early teens. I say this as someone who, simultaneously, has no belief whatsoever in the supernatural or magic, it’s just a subject that I’m endlessly fascinated by. Recently, I saw a blurb on the internet claiming that a horror movie explored the Abremalin ritual in detail, so I had to see it for myself. That movie is 2016’s A Dark Song.
I’d been awaiting The Eyes of My Mother for almost a year. I remember hearing some buzz back in April or May last year from a friend who had seen a print and raved about it. “You saw Audition, right?” he asked. Well sure, I’ve seen Audition, and almost every Takashi Miike movie – but I can’t say I’m a particular fan of his work. If The Eyes Of My Mother was being compared to Audition, I was interested, but knew I’d approach my eventual viewing warily. Not that I don’t like gore, and not that I can’t take disturbing content – I watched the infamous “three guys one hammer” video unflinching, and that’s like stunt-eating the hottest wings on the planet. Once you’ve watched THAT, something like Audition isn’t going to make a major impact. Continue reading “Movie Review: THE EYES OF MY MOTHER – impressive, nihilistic horror debut for young moviemaker Nicolas Pesce.”
I’m probably not the only person on Earth to wonder why someone thought it would be a great idea to make another sequel to seminal horror movie The Blair Witch Project, especially given that 1/ the original movie was 17 years old when this sequel was released, and 2/ Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was a bad movie rushed to capitalize on the success of the original, and failed badly both critically and commercially. As of me writing this (January 8, 2017), Blair Witch has a worldwide gross of $45M on a $5M budget, making it more successful than Book of Shadows on paper, but the harsh reality is that in terms of present value of money, and ticket prices outstripping inflation, Blair Witch took in far less money from the public. It may have made a decent profit, but it failed to catch the attention of the public at large.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 