The tenth entry in the ‘Hellraiser’ franchise…and expectations were the highest that low expectations can be set. After ‘Hellraiser: Revelations’…existed. Almost entirely for the purposes of retaining the IP to ‘Hellraiser’ long enough for Dimension films and Miramax to complete the preproduction work on an ‘ACTUALLY GOOD’ Hellraiser movie. I went into this one with a bit of a cocky swagger, I’d been promised a ‘good’ Hellraiser movie after burning through most of my October watching quite possibly the biggest flameout a horror series has ever had.

The DTV years for Hellraiser wernt kind, and after suffering through ‘Inferno’, ‘Deader’ and ‘Hellseeker’, only to experience the splash of cold sick to the face that was ‘Revelations’ This film was all but certain to get nailed on as one of the top 5 Hellraiser films by simply NOT randomly deciding to be anything other than a ‘Hellraiser’ movie and sticking the landing. and I think they kinda sorta largely succeed in the brief honestly.

Up front, I’ll be frank. this is SO far removed from the quality and standards set by the first 2 ‘Hellraiser’ movies, that it cant even really be mentioned in the same company as them. However; for me? this film grinds all the DTV entries into the dust, and even gives ‘Bloodline’ and ‘Hellraiser: III’ a run for its money. In the same year 2018’s ‘Halloween’ soft reboot hit screens, This film kind of attempts similar…but not really.

The plot? Its basically ‘What if Hellraiser, but also ‘Se7en’…but we already did that kind of movie…so what if that…but again…but good.’ as were reintroduced to the world of Hellraiser via ‘The Auditor’ a Cenobite working on behalf of Pinhead judging the scourge of mankind to punish them effectively. Enter; ‘The Preceptor’ a sadist serial killer who murders his victims in line with the 10 commandments. his…particularly gory and unpleasent murders have drawn the attention of a trio of detectives who begin working on tracking down the mysterious killer. However, when the detectives find a clue that leads them to a child murderer from a previous case whos mysteriously gone missing. The detectives cross paths with the Auditor who takes a shine to one of them. Leading to a VERY dark rabbit hole of mystery and a centuries long holy war…

And I feel this is the first film in a LONG time to really get close to nailing the aesthetic, tone and vibe of what I feel a ‘Hellraiser’ film should be. Most of the DTV era of Hellraiser films were either horror/thrillers that had been re-written to force Pinhead into them, or they were ‘hellraiser’ films written by people who’d failed to understand what the cenobites really were, and just kind of…focussed on Pinhead and turned him into whatever kind of ‘slasher’ adjacent being the narrative called for him to be.

‘Hellraiser: Judgement’ is a viscerally nasty film with some genuinely unpleasent imagery that at times had notes of the original and ‘Hellbound’ and while thats welcome, it does kind of end up ultimatley being its folly. Because, in my opinion, they do rather overegg it. One of the reasons I kind of love ‘Hellbound’ is because they use graphic gore sparingly, but when they do it, it’s intense and works a contrast against the rest of the movie, genuinely making me wince at times.

Here? it happens a LOT, even in places it isnt really needed, they just do it anyway…And it kind of ends up heading in the direction of the ‘Hostel’ films as a result, which I wasnt as keen on.

By this point the ‘Hellraiser’ series has had at least 4 entries that have seen some kind of ‘investigation’ or investigative lead tracking down the cenobites. And this is absolutely (in my opinion) the best film to tackle that style, but to say im fatigued with this setup, would be a bit of an understatement.

The plot itself is fine, a little derivitive, but we’ll take what we can get at this point. The characters are all fairly well developed with some nice twists and turns that genuinely caught me off guard on the first watch, but make sense in retrospective. I like how they frame the cenobites in this entry restoring a bit more of the mystery to Pinhead and introducing a kind of ‘holy war’ between heaven and hell.

It feels like an entry that shows the Cenobites nearer to the end of their power than their beginning and their is a bit of a whiff of finality about it all. Which I honestly kind of appreciated at this point. While some could argue it contradicts ‘Bloodline’ to do so. I personally was always of the opinion that Cenobites are interdimensional and that we’ve been seeing their chronology out of order in order to see our chronology linerly.

I will say, I did have mixed feelings on the films need to tie things back to the first two films, they dont really do anything overt, which I appreciated after several botched ‘homages’ in previous entries…But at this point in my viewing life. I find the idea of referencing other better films, even in a subtle way, a bit ‘ick’ inducing if im honest.

The pacings pretty decent, at an hour and 20 its about as long as i’d like a movie like this to run, the act structuring is solid and tonally it mixes some very light humour with ‘The Auditor’ into a jet black horror thats splatterific, obscene at times and managed to hold my attention throughout.

The direction is pretty rock solid. Barring a somewhat rickety ‘final shot’ which was a bit dissapointing, and a bit of a reliance on stock footage for locations. I was quite impressed, the film is open to some creative experimentation, isnt relying on CGI chronically and most importantly IS trying to show the story through the visuals, rather than just telling the audience. Somewhat dissapointingly; the director has said he’d have been happy for this film to have a sequel of spin off. And a TV show that continued this story and opened up ‘the holy war’ was in development. But I assume isnt happening. and thats a real shame as I think they could have built something even more out there and interesting in framework this film sets up.

The cine is pretty solid as well, shots are largely well composed, and while the colour grade is once again back to washed out, dingey ‘desaturation-vision’ they at least bother to make contrasts between the different levels that the Cenobites inhabit, which itself adds to the existing lore. If there are any criticisms here, its with the edit, I dont feel like the editor handled the more horror driven scenes well, the more ‘day to day’ detective scenes were handled fine to good for the most part. But when it came to horror, the editing rule seems to have been just ‘cut as quickly as possible between 2-3 different gory/unpleasent images for 5 second blasts’…It felt messy, and I know its to create a sense of loss of control or chaos…But even so. its overused here and made it feel cheap.

Performance wise? Probably a controversial take, but i’m gonna say it. Paul T. Taylor is a rock solid Pinhead in this movie, I really enjoyed his turn here, its a real shame that they’re unlikely to get him back, and (the controversial bit) Doug Bradley is 71 years old at the time of writing, In my opinion, his last few appearences as Pinhead were just kind of unremarkable, and given his age, the necessity to find a suitable ‘handover’ actor for the role made sense at the time, and continues to make sense now. Taylor looks the part, gives a great vocal performance, a fantastic physical turn. I’d have loved to have seen him done more honestly.

Damon Carney plays the lead detective on the case, and hes a rock solid lead too, bringing a lot of energy and a great physical range to the film. he has some nice twists and turns to deal with and I think he moves through those fairly effortlessly with a decent turn.

Gary J. Tunnicliffe plays ‘The Auditor’ alongside directing duties, and again, I think he offers probably the most interesting additions to the ‘Hellraiser’ series since ‘Bloodline’ and adds just a nice subtle contrast of humour to a series thats been BEGGING to have SOMETHING contrast its darker nature without just going full goofy for the better part of 18 years at this point. and I think he really nails it honestly.

‘Hellraiser: Judgement’ is probably the only entry post ‘Bloodline’ that I could actually see myself solidly revisiting in future, its imperfect. But it knows what it wants to be, and largely succeeds in doing it. Probably not the best film to introduce someone to the series with. I think if you were to watch this film straight after ‘Hellbound’ you’d have the makings of a pretty solid trilogy on your hands. Put it this way, with only the 2022 ‘Hellraiser’ remake left on my list to check out. This is the only ‘Hellraiser’ film past ‘Bloodline’ that I would happily recommend checking out.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hellraiser-judgment/

Another day, another random supernatural horror film found in the back end of Tubi. And…on the one hand, I wasnt particularly OFFENDED by the presence of this movie…But as the credits rolled, I was just kind of left with the kind of hollow feeling that you can only really TRUELY get from a film that comes to the table with nothing, says nothing and leaves with nothing.

In essence, this is a supernatural/paranormal haunted house movie. Its non linear and opens with a cop exploring an abandoned home where, in 1988 a suspected ‘cult’ ritual killing happend in which only one woman managed to survive, while 4 people died. Now, a group of ‘paranormal documentarians’ are taking a man named John who’s partner Michelle is part of this group back to the house, as Johns been having visions of the house and is reluctantly hopeful in finding some answers.

From here, the film jumps back and forth between John being interviewed by a criminal psychologist, the police trying to piece together the case on the ground, and flashbacks to our group setting up for a seance, while spooky shenanigans occur. And, if you do intend to watch this movie, I wont spoil much here…Other than to issue a PSA to all upcoming writers and script editors…Please. I beg you, if your going to do an ‘unreliable narrator’ storyline, make it clear that the unreliable narrator is unreliable up front. I do NOT want to get 70 minutes into an 88 minute movie to ONLY THEN find out that the vast majority of what ive seen or been told so far may or may not be true, and that everything from that point to the credits may be false also.

This film isnt great, but I was rooting for it for the most part because, while it wasnt the best made film i’ve ever seen, it had fun ish moments and there were some half decent twists and turns. But the ‘unreliable narrator’ trope being dropped on this film around the start of the 3rd act with no warm up whatsoever felt like the scriptwriters and directors were trying to be clever…and instead poured cold water on the whole production because, you’ve just essentially told me the car I bought was made of construction paper…and your expecting me to clap. No.

Across the board this films just average. The scripts plot, for a haunted house movie? hits most of the tropes common with late 2000’s and early 2010s paranormal horror. You’d think the found footage element would pep the film up a bit, but it doesnt, because they dont really try anything new here, literally everything in this film is cliche tropes from Haunted house/paranormal movies of the last 25 years combined with plot tropes you quite literally can set your watch to. Throughout this whole film, I kept being reminded of ‘Deadstream’ not in a fond way…in a ‘Id rather be watching ‘Deadstream’ kind of way.

I think the biggest problem is how the film chooses to spend its time really, clocking in at 82 minutes, the film feels bizarrely rushed, especially in the back end, when a lot of the plotting is reliant on audiences just…not really questioning anything. I feel like a lot of detail around the muders, the history of the house and the tension building are just…not present here at all, and the result is a film that instead focusses WAY too much on the lead in to the house exploration, and the gang setting up tech…and nowhere NEAR enough time making me actually give a damn about the circumstances.

All the characters are generic horror stock cliches, again the script isnt trying anything new, the ‘revelations’ that turn up are kind of unremarkable in the year of our lord 2015. again, they arnt BAD perse…they’re just totally middle of the road and didnt really do much for me.

Same goes with the direction and cine. Non of its particularly bad, but it feels trapped somewhere between a studio films polish, and an indie films ‘rough and ready’ vibes. Theres decent CGI across the runtime, but theres almost no risks taken here. The creative vision for this piece is seemingly ‘My horror DVD Stack 2006-2014’ and thats about it. Theres nothing attempted here that hasnt been done a hundred times over in better and bolder productions.

The cines washed out, murky and sludgey. shots are well composed, but again, theres nothing here to put me on the edge of my seat, nothing to make me take notice and nothing to really create a sense of suspense. Its just…by the numbers in a very unremarkable way, even the sequence buildings overly safe and remeniscent of films 10 years its senior…its kind of wild really.

The performances are all pretty mixed to passable, noone goofs, but the absolute best performances here, are just kind of half decent. they dont really work a good emotional range, they dont come across as naturalistic, the dialogue seems ill fitting to them and the physical acting isa mixed bag of ‘good’ to ‘static’…and thats kind of a problem.

Throw in an ultra generic score and large swathes of the film where the dialogue track is mixed too low, meaning subtitles had to be used. And the end result is a film that aimed low, landed in mediocre and lost a HUGE chunk of goodwill from me with a plot twist that landed like a Squit in the paddling pool. One I could see being an easier riffer with beer and good company, ABSOLUTELY NOT one to seek out, and certainly not worth going out of your way for…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/demonic/

Oh…oh no…oh dear. What fresh hell is this? After a 6 year absence from screens large or small, the Hellraiser franchise returned with a 9th entry, and so the story goes, *Allegedly* this was a bit of a rush release. Miramax and Dimension had planned to do a *Proper* big budget remake of the original ‘Hellraiser’ and preproduction was long underway, when they realised that their license to the IP was set to imminently expire. So the story goes that for $100,000, and 2-3 weeks filming allowance, they hashed out a rough and ready ‘Hellraiser’ movie in order to keep within their licensing agreements for the IP, to buy them time to make the movie they ACTUALLY wanted to make in a couple years time.

The results? A movie so bizarre in its execution it makes ‘The Room’ seem functional, and so poorly produced, the app I was watching this on bricked 6 minutes off the end as an act of digital Seppuku…I had to finish the movie via my fucking telephone.

The plot? is a non linear mix of found footage and ‘in the moment’ storytelling. As we follow two teens ‘Steven’ and ‘Nico’ as they sneak off from their respective families for a hedonistic bender weekend in Mexico. Unfortunately; things go a bit squiffy when Steven somehow gets hold of the Lament configuration, and summons demons from hell who tear his soul apart…

We then flash forward to the families of Steven and Nico who have arranged a special dinner together to try and raise their spirits as its been several weeks since their sons were last seen…However; it isnt working. Largely because Nicos mother is obsessed with watching the video footage captured by her son of their Mexican escape constantly, in the hopes of closure, or as a compulsion…or maybe both.

The only items recovered from the scene of the boys dissapearence was a camcorder, and the puzzle box. and for most of the first act, we flash back and forward between the, at times tense family dinner, as its revealed that Stevens sister Emma has sneakily viewed the camcorder footage against her parents wishes and has found the puzzle box and become…weirdly obsessed with it. and the camcorder footage itself. Revealing that Steven and Nico had a chance encounter with a girl at a bar, and while absolutely wrecked on tequila, an unknown event happened that led to the womans death…and shortly after ANOTHER encounter with a strange hobo, leads them to come into possession of the puzzlebox.

Things come to a head when Nico suddenly reappears at the start of the 2nd act, severely dehydrated and covered in blood. But somethings off, Nico is having terrible visions and isnt quite acting himself. and as Emma comes closer and closer to solving the puzzlebox…all the while getting…WEIRDLY horny about the whole thing…revelations will hit the families that will tear WAY more than just their souls apart.

And up front, I need to be clear, this is a cheap, CHEAP movie. There isnt a single facet of this production where the low budget nature of the whole thing is glaringly apparent, from scripts to costumes, direction to grading to effects. There isnt a single thing here that looks like it had the backing of a studio behind it..and given this is a studio produced picture of a much beloved and deeply malnourished franchise…I find that quite wild, but not unsurprising.

The script is probably this films strongest element, I liked that they introduced a found footage element to the franchise, and while its incredibly hit and miss and pretty much entirely abandoned by the end of the first act, at least they tried? I guess??? Being honest, the script reads and feels as if the writer, up until the final deadline was given to him, had never even HEARD of ‘Hellraiser’ and to correct that, he watched the first one and went ‘Ah right. okay’ and just…lifted half a dozen references from the first movie and transplanted them into this one. and that runs across the visual notes of this film as well as the plot lines.

A lot of the story is geared more towards the ‘hornier’ elements present in ‘Hellraiser’ 1 and 2. but its all without context, all without the grounding needed to make it make sense. The original two films understood that pain and pleasure are narrow margins and the cenobites arnt intrinsically a ‘pain only’ crowd. This film by contrast feels like a skinimax horror movie at times, something you’d be embarrissed to have your parents catch you watching, whether sex was on screen or not.

A lot of my goodwill to the script largely goes to the fact that for only the 2nd time in 11 years, we have a Hellraiser film that isnt just an investigator trying to piece together what the cenobites are. The final act in which all the dirty details from both sides of the family and whats ACTUALLY happened while the boys are missing is fun in a goofy way, but much like ‘Hellworld’ I was just left by the end of this wondering how we fell so far, so fast and so hard. Its depressing.

The pacings all over the place, the film is non linear for about a third of the runtime, which means we end up jumping all over the place, with some moments being purposfully slowburn, but at the wrong times, and other moments being WAY too quick making us miss valuble information as to whats going on. The act structuring is VERY heavy handed, they might as well have act cards for how blatently they tell the audience that ‘thats enough of that!’

The characters are all SUPER underwritten, ‘generic american in theatrical production’ is about as advanced as we get, and critically non of their development is earned or built up. This is a film where stuff just kind of happens, and the audience is just expected to go along with it.

And the dialogue…oh god, its only JUST better than ‘The Room’ but its SO dry and stiff, it makes some Asylum pictures look studio grade. its truely awful.

Most importantly of all, the film fails to capture any real sense of menace, terror or fear. Its a wallpaper movie. something that just ticks over in the background, that you forget is even running until the unbalanced end credits blow your speakers out 72 minutes after hitting play. The horror element is non existent, there is no ‘ethereal’ vibe to this production, and once again the cenobites as characters have been totally nuked from ‘Pseudo demi gods from another dimension built off of pain and pleasure who feed on the eternal suffering of those damned enough to find their box’ to ‘scary man who lives in a box who wants to hurt you.’ AND once again we get no real diversity in cenobites, with Pinhead once again remaining the constant, and the other cenobites being ANOTHER variation of ‘Chatterer’ and another eyeless, smooth cenobite.

The direction looks worse than DTV, its shot like a home shopping channel infomercial. its too bright, too well lit, too colourful and too naturalistic. The cenobites realm looks designer…and that REALLY shouldnt be the case.

The cine too is just…painfully out of synch with what the film needed, very flat profile, very little variation, no experimentation, complimented by horrible overuse of CGI, bad makeup and costumes, and a terrible colour grade that makes everything feel cheap and tacky. It looks like an Asylum knock off for about 90% of the movie. and the edits just as bad, Im pretty sure they couldnt figure out a good running order for how the found footage interacted with the ‘present day’ footage, so they just appear to have…rammed it all together as best a fit as they could and called it a day. Because why reshoot or bother with B-roll and cutaways when we know up front this is an IP retention exercise?!

The performances are frankly dire, most of the cast would rival the Sterling entertainment stable in terms of their acting ability, overly dry, totally unbelievable line deliveries of creaky dialogue, poor physicality. The cenobites look like they’ve had too much baking powder added to them while they were in the oven. they dont move with menace, they over emote, and scenes that are supposed to have a ‘seductive’ and ‘malevolent’ take to them left me crying with laughter for how badly handled they were. I can say hand on heart that every performer in this failed to sell me on their acting ability, or their characters.

And the soundtracks bad too, it sounds almost entirely composed of library tracks, badly cut in, badly timed and mixed higher than the dialogue for the most part making it difficult to hear whats being said. BUT! as a counter to that, they also didnt properly audio balance on set. Meaning screams and other loud noises clearly peak MULTIPLE times leading to a horrendous ‘hot’ sound on the mic…which…again, this is a STUDIO picture…HOW?!

Surprisingly; ‘Hellraiser: Revelations’ NARROWLY avoids being the worst ‘Hellraiser’ movie ever made, I think that honour still goes to ‘Deader’ because, while this film has a poorly constructed script, bad direction and cine, poor performances and a bad score and poor audio recording and mixing. Its plot has at least vaguely funny moments from a cringe or ‘So bad its good’ perspective. it at least has points where I sat there with my jaw on the floor at just how BAD it really truely was…Deader was just boring…or rather, I came away from this film kind of bemused at what i’d just seen and wondering how ANYONE even BEGAN to think this was a good idea…I came away from ‘Deader’ wishing i’d not wasted my time.

All this to say, Hellraiser: Revelations isnt very good, in fact, its pretty awful. but if you have a taste for bad movies. I think you may…DEEP…DEEP within the guts of this thing, find at least a couple crumbs to cling to…but why youd watch it based on that advertisement…I have no idea.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hellraiser-revelations/

This review may contain spoilers.

The final film in the ‘original’ run of the ‘Hellraiser’ films is something of a bittersweet affair. We are FAR from the dizzying highs that were the first 2-4 entries in the series. But after essentially remaking the same movie with slight variences for 3 entries. ‘Hellworld’ decides to try and strike out with something very different. And if you ever wondered ‘What if ‘Hellraiser’ but ACTUALLY ‘Halloween Ressurection’ by way of ‘Thir13en Ghosts’ and just a dash of ‘Saw’? then you’ve found the right place.

This film was shot back to back with ‘Deader’ in Romania, and is the last (to date) on screen appearence of Doug Bradley as Pinhead. And its clear when they were filming this that the divorce of assets was kind of brutal. Deader got the higher end physical effects, TONS of ‘on location’ filming and better lighting. Hellworld got the better script, significantly more Pinhead screentime and the lions share of the digital effects budget.

The plot? is weird…theres, theres no other way to say it really. So the film is based outside of the previous continuities, in this world ‘Hellraiser: Hellworld’ is some kind of augmented world MMORPG in which players explore the worlds of Hellraiser together to unlock real rewards in the real world.

The game is half based in fiction, but also kind of…half weirdly based in fact? Like…the toy maker and all of his history are real world canon in this movie, they claim his descendents went on to build real world Cathedrals and there are portraits and books on the families history mentioned throughout the film. But the Cenobites seem are discussed much more as folk lore figures? Like; the way they discuss the Cenobites makes it sound like they’re a weird blip in the toymakers history that are liklely just metaphorical or representational of a traumatic period…But then at the same time the game itself features the Lament configuration, which is exactly how its appeared in previous films, they reference Leviathan…but in this film its the name of a manor rather than the name of the god from ‘Hellbound’

Its…odd. it’s like someone half binge watched all the Hellraiser movies up to ‘Hellseeker’ only really skimming key words and then remixed them into some attempt at significant meaning without their initial context…

Anyway; in this universe, Hellworld is in the middle of a major competition, the prize of which is tickets to a secret ‘Hellworld’ shindig in a recluse manor called ‘Leviathan’. and we’re introduced to some of the most painfully early 2000s early 20 year olds you’ll see this side of ‘I know what you did last summer’. They’re all playing the games with varying levels of enthusiasm, and they all manage to secure secret tickets to the event.

The gang are thrilled, as it comes off the back of a recent tragedy as one of their friends died in mysterious circumstances, and this has caused a bit of a rift in the friendship circle.

The gang all arrive at the manor and are greeted by a ‘Host’, who gives them a history of the manor, something to drink, lets them explore an archive of ‘hellraiser’ related materials, before letting them get back to the party.

But somethings…off, theres an unnerving elements to the party, and when the gang stumble on a secret experimental lab in the basement filled with Feotuses, torture devices and pickled limbs. it sets in motion a series of events that will see our ‘teens’ fighting to stay alive from a serial killer with intention, and a meeting with Pinhead and the Cenobites himself.

This was another instance of the folks at Miramax/Dimension films rooting through there rejected script drawer, pulling one of the less stinky offerings out and gussying it up with the Hellraiser name and Cenobites. and that leads to an interesting quandry for me really. Is this a good ‘Hellraiser’ movie? NO. its a TERRIBLE Hellraiser movie, the Cenobites do almost nothing and are largely present for aesthetic purposes only…But is this a good slasher/horror film? well…kind of yeah!

The script itself is a fine enough slasher/haunted house movie romp. the Thir13en Ghosts and Halloween ressurection vibes are really strong here with overly charismatic and sarcastic leading cast members meeting dark and grizzly fates and heavy HEAVY reference to that whole new fangled ‘WWW.’ business. This is a script that really wants to sell its connection to the ‘online’ world, but has clearly been written by someone who had NO idea, at that point in time, what the internet even really was. So they keep things kind of low key in the film itself, and let the marketing do the heavy lifting.

Theres also a weird emphasis on the Nokia 3310 in this film, Im assuming the rampant product placement was what helped pay for the movie, that and mobile phones were ‘NEW WAVE MY DUDE!’ but every scene has a Nokia mobile phone crammed into it somewhere, which I thought was pretty funny.

The pacings a little on the slow side, but nowhere near as slow as the films that have come before it, the characters are all typical horror archtypes and the act structuring is that of a generic late 90s slasher film.

To be blunt, if you are tuning into this expecting serious and straight cut horror, then you are going to be bitterly BITTERLY dissapointed. But if your here for the bizarre site of an overtly campy hellraiser movie oozing with early 2000s aesthetic. then I think you’ll really love the scripting on this one.

Me? I think i’d have rated this one higher had it NOT been tied to a hellraiser movie. the plot on its own is a fine enough little romp, and had it had its own identity I could have maybe even seen myself picking this one up sooner than I did and having a real nostalgia for it. Instead, with it being tied to Hellraiser, I overlooked it massively and the Hellraiser elements are fun in their own way, but a bit weird and forced in here.

Direction wise, I think this is probably the sturdiest offering the series has had since ‘Bloodline’ its not taking much in the way of creative risks here, but what IS present is a safe film, which I think after 3 films of creative chaos on behalf of the director and editor not really knowing what to do with the series visually (causing them to just…shove as many filters on the production as possible) was a welcome change of pace. In an ideal world, I’d have liked creative vision AND sturdiness…but at this point, im willing to settle if we dont have to spend another movie in a grey sludge colour palette with ropey effects and bad editing.

Cine wise, again, its very safe. Im glad the colour grades evolved a bit more to feel warmer, with blues contrasting the warm reds and oranges of the manor house and the location footage. composition isnt really anything to write home about, but at least when the cenobites are on camera this time, they actually look kind of interesting. The edits fairly generic as well, which again, at this point, im just grateful.

Performance wise, we have an early turn from Henry Cavill and Khary Payton here and Lance Hendrickson playing ‘The Host’. Hendrickson is fantastic as the malevolent antagonist of the film, he’s clearly not giving it his all, but he’s still probably one of the best reasons to watch the movie. Our teen leads however are less than impressive, not bad…just kind of forgettable. Unremarkable really, just; generic 90s slasher victims at their most stereotypical. Again, given what we’ve come from, this is a step up. But given where we’ve been, its dissapointing.

If Hellraiser: Hellworld is the final entry in the OG Hellraiser timeline, i’d say that it ends better than its been in a LONG time. after 10 years of mediocre to poor entries in the series, Hellworld ends things on, not a good note…but a solid enough one…a film I found amusing more than spooky. I think i’d happily watch this one paired up with ‘Halloween Ressurection’ as a ‘.Com’ double feature. Probably the only DTV Hellraiser film i’d choose to revisit. its not good…but so is Junk food, and I still eat that.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hellraiser-hellworld/

I’ve lost track of how many times i’ve seen ‘The Brain that Wouldnt Die’ in one format or another, I’ve seen it riffed multiple times, remixed, novelised, theatricized, turned into a musical, remastered, remade and everything inbetween. On my bluray copy of ‘Phantasmatapes’ in the ‘Special Features’ they included a reasonble quality upscaled VHS rip of the full film to compliment their remixed take on it. Its the kind of quality you’d find on most ‘public domain’ box sets from the 90s and 2000s, Just; captured from a good source and upscaled for HD TVs…And, with Halloween just around the corner. I figured revisiting the film in the format im most familiar with (the kind shown on TV late night before anyone thought to ACTUALLY present the film as intended) was a fun enough way to kill an hour and 20 as any.

The plots straightforward enough. A genius surgeon has been working secretly on a syrum that allows surgical grafts to perfectly meld to the host with no complications and far less risky surgery to do so. Its a world first. But its having to be conducted in secret because, at this point in time that kind of surgery is seen as essentially a death warrent for anyone who wants to participate, and if it got out to the wider medical community before it was ready to be presented, it would be considered ‘Quackery’ at BEST…and aa possible long jail sentence at worst.

However! its vacation time! So! our surgeon and his young lady wife head off in their open top to live it up good and proper! However, disaster strikes when their car takes a bend incorrectly and the pair are flung from the vehical. The surgeons fine enough, other than being a bit shaken…But the wifes in a real bad way…She’s been decapitated. Thinking quickly, her husband bundles her head up and takes her to a nearby safehouse, where he’s been performing his experiments. And, working with a colleague who’s in on the work. They manage to perfectly preserve her head in a tray of ‘ressurection’ fluid.

Of course, the womans absolutely distraught and begs for death. But her husband refuses, saying he’s going to go and secure a body for her, and when he finds the right one. He’s going to use his miracle fluid to successfully transplant his wifes head onto the new body, and from there life will carry on. Shortly after announcing this, she also discovers a ‘failed’ experiment that still lives on, imprisoned behind a locked and bolted door. It turns out that, whatevers in the fluid allows her to telepathically communicate with the beast behind the door, and the pair begin to plot a mutual desctruction of the lab and themselves. While our surgeon friend hits the streets looking for the right body to connect to his wife. Leading to a firey finale.

I have a real soft spot for this one, its sci-fi horor with a twinge of fantasy and a heaping dose of camp and while I cant say its one of my all time favourites, I do find myself occasionally revisiting it for that monster movie quality I love.

The script isnt overly complex, in fact its a very linear, very one note production that deals with a complex theme in a way that a lot of movies of this time wouldnt really handle it. Most films around this time would have framed the husband as a hero for wanting to save his wife, and the wife would have been MORE than willing to have a new body to continue living with her husband, glossing over the more morbid aspects of the logistics of that.

This film tackles it head on, and its refreshing to see a female lead in a monster movie have both autonomy and a decisive wish that goes against the male leads expectations. They frame the husband as a monster in this movie, because he is. and as such its satisfying to see the discussions on letting go, death and having an opinion that goes against loved ones wishes explored in a more interesting fashion.

The pacing is a little ‘come and go’ sometimes it runs with a real zip, while othertimes it can get a little pedestrian. But theres usually something going on consistently throughout, and while I definitely think we could have lost 10 minutes and gained a tighter production alltogether, I appreciate just how much they cram into that 82 minute runtime.

Tonally; its working with a nice contrast, the campier monster sequences and violence are offset by some genuine pathos and depressing moments. its faily early body horror, and I think it handles itself really well.

Direction wise, we have a striking vision, while I can say that visually the imagery is distinct, the cinematography is a little bit generic for the time. The visuals here are unique for this movie, but the actual technical ability that produces them isnt really out of place with the cine styles of the time, and this slots in relatively well with the ‘Night of the ghouls’ and ‘Mad Monsters’ of the era. Its fine enough, maybe a little overly basic at times and the set dressing is minimal to the point of being almost non existent, but the plot and performances are so powerfull, that its only afterwards you really realise just how sparse and basic the production really was.

Virginia Leith as Jan (in the pan) is an absolute showstopper here, bringing a wide range of emotions and coming across as bizarrely understandable and naturalistic for a literal talking severed head. If you only catch the movie for one reason, her performance is almost certainly it. Contrasting her we have Jason Evers as her partner Bill. a malevolent and ruthless figure who we see slowly descend into demented determined madness across the runtime, with a powerful energy that clashes with Virginias wonderfully. The pair are superb on screen together and again, really lift what could have been a VERY corny film above its station.

‘The Brain that wouldnt die’ is one of those ‘Iconic’ Bmovies of the 50s and 60s, maybe lesser thought about than the larger studio funded pics, but a textbook example of the genre and a great starting point for people looking to dig into the lesser known/affectioned titles. Definitely worth your time, especially around the spooky season. Its a quick, fun and slightly messy movie thats got a heart of gold!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-brain-that-wouldnt-die/

It still kind of blows my mind that ‘Sinister’ as a franchise never got to fully launch, while movies like ‘Insidious’ and ‘The Conjuring’ were allowed to thrive. The first entry in this series was a bit of a slog in places, but it had a fun and interesting take on the ‘supernatural Horror’ genre, It handled the ‘found footage’ genre in an authentic and interesting way, the characters were well written and aesthetically it looked really solid. It certainly didnt commit any crimes that films of its time wernt doing in droves anyway…I was kind of cautious therefore, that the sequel HAD to be bad…I mean, most reviews slated the film, and a poor box office taking combined with bad test audience reactions all but cemented the fact that a part 3 would never materialise…something that has yet to happen to this day…

And yet, watching ‘Sinister 2’ tonight, I honestly couldnt see where the disinterest and even hate stemmed from. I actually thought it was a pretty solid horror movie that maybe in some respects even surpassed the original.

The film picks up a few months to a couple of years after the events of the first film. and we open by being introduced to Courtney and her two children Dylan and Zach. The trio are fleeing an abusive relationship, thats seeing them ducking and weaving private investigators and keeping ready to run on a moments notice. But at this point in time, a friends agreed to let them stay in an abandoned townhouse that sits on the land they own, in the hope that they can wait it out till the custody trial, in the hopes of averting Dylan and Zachs father taking them back into custody he legally doesnt have.

Problem is, that town house was victim to a terrible family murder, followed by the dissapearence of one of the families children. Yes Bughuul is back baby! and he’s bought a TON of dead kids along for the ride. And this time he has his evil EVIL eyes set on Courtneys kids.

Luckily, The deputy from the last movie (now an ex-deputy) has been picking up the research left by Ellison and his research team, and he’s struck on a winning strategy. If he burns the house down wherea Bughuul related murder has happened BEFORE a family can move in. He cant work he weird magic on the place and it breaks the chain. Unfotunately Bughuul has multiple chains going, so our Ex-deputy has to basically go state by state following media reports, hoping he happens to burn down the right house at the right time.

Well, as you can imagine his investigations lead him to the door of the townhouse Coutney is laying low in. and things basically explode from there, with the children taken by Bughuul trying desperately to coax Dylan into murdering his family for Bughuul, while the kids father returns on the scene with officers to demand Courtney and the kids return back to his home…where the chaos is sure to begin again.

Our ex dep, courtney and the kids must stand up against their abusive spouse, AND fight the forces of evil…and if they’re lucky…maybe discover true love along the way.

And I think all the issues I had with ‘Sinister’ largely get resolved here in the sequel. the lofty glacial moving script is cut down to a well paced 92 minutes, theres plenty going on in the narrative to push things along comfortably at that pace. The act structuring is smooth and consistent with seamless transitions across the 3 acts and a gentle ramp up across the 3 movements. The characters are maybe a bit less naturalistic and feel a bit more ‘horror movie’ oriented, but the trade off is a richer, more complex story that deals with difficult topics both up front in the domestic abuse storyline, and using a nice layer of subtext with Bughuul.

The film feels a bit more comfortable in its skin, relaxing more and dealing with human social interactions, rather than the first films reliance on one characters spiral out and the people he hurt in the process. This, felt like a movie you could more easily sink into and just enjoy as a movie. rather than an out and out ‘vibe’ piece.

The direction also ends up engaging in a bit of a trade off, the first film was very highly strung on Aesthetic, creating a smokey, woozy, dream like vibe for the full runtime, a strong visual aesthetic that the audience is supposed to let carry them across the runtime. This films a bit more grounded in traditional horror iconography and vision. But I feel that works to its favour here, its less aggressively in your face, it still happily gives the audience some of that wonderfully dark imagery. but it also gives the audience a nice visual contrast. A bit of light to work in with the dark…Something I felt the last film was missing.

Cine wise, its pretty solid, maybe not quite as solid as the first film. But compositions are pretty on the level, theres a bit more wobbly CGI here than the previous installment, and the Jumpscare element has more or less been fully stripped away in favour of a more unsettling atmosphere. But I actually kind of prefer that, with some solid sequence arrangements helping keep things pretty boiant for the full runtime.

Performance wise, James Ransone and Shannyn Sosssamon are pretty solid here…I was dubious when I saw that the deputy from the first film was being bumped up to a main cast member for this entry. But James nad Shannyn work really well together, they have great on screen chemestry and when Lea Coco comes onto the scene as Husband ‘Clint’ it really kicks up to the next level and properly cemented that this cast were really clicking with the material given to them. In a way, its kind of unintentionally funny tyhat Lea somehow manages to make a more terrifying villain in this story than the ACTUAL demon child snatcher…

and as for the soundtrack? its solid. It feels very similar to the first film. and I thought it was mixed to good last time…so, Im not going to complain about more of the same!

‘Sinister 2’ actually kind of surprised me, while we lose the distinct aesthetic and intense atmosphere of the first film, we end up with a much leaner, much punchier, much more engaging film. I could see myself watching ‘Sinister’ late at night, in a very particular headspace, when im wanting a specific vibe from a horror movie. Its the kind of movie that scratches a very particular itch.

Sinister 2, I could see myself putting on…Just because I wanna watch a 2010’s horror movie thats nice and digestable. I could easily see this becoming something of a comfort watch for just how smooth a movie it is. While it being that is a bit dissapointing, because it means it isnt a truely ‘great’ movie…the fact i’d gladly watch this again, and the fact I thought it inches ahead of the first entry, means it surely must have SOMETHING going for it.

Honestly? I could recommend either of these films. I’d say you’d probably need to watch the first film to truely appreciate this one. But as long as you’ve seen the first one at least once, this one is a lot more fun and has a much higher chance of going into your regular rotation.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sinister-2/

Ohhhh I should have known when my ‘Hellraiser’ 4 pack multifilm bluray set missed this one off the list, that it wasnt going to be a fun ride…and Im dissapointed to say that it wasnt…’Hellraiser: Deader’ is a DRAG of a movie. and from top to bottom, its probably the farthest removed from the original intention of the films that we’ve gotten so far.

Right off the top; ‘Deader’ is not a real word. and to someone who hasnt SEEN the movie, they’ll have NO idea what that even means…Because something is either ‘dead’…or its not. you cant be ‘deader’ because you cant be ‘more dead’ than ‘dead’. So calling your film ‘Hellraiser: Deader’ without the vital context just makes the film sound dumb even before i’ve hit play.

What is the plot of this one? Well…we’re once again approaching the series from an ‘investigative’ position, ‘Inferno’ had a bad cop tracking down the cenobites, Hellseeker had a dirty stockbroker trying to piece together fragmented memories while being pursued by Pinhead…and this film? follows an investigative journalist called Amy.

Here is the literal full plot of this movie. Amy is an investigative journalist who specialises in ‘extreme’ or ‘unusual’ cases. Shes called into her bosses office one afternoon and shown a tape of a group of people in Romania who appear to commit suicide, and then get ressurected by a strange man dressed all in white.

Amy is confused and asks if this is some kind of ‘special effects’ joke…her boss confirms it isnt, and they’re a cult like group called the ‘Deaders’ who follow this mysterious man and his life giving powers…for some reason. And Amy is being tasked with heading to Romania to see if she can get the scoop on this.

So…She does, and what follows is about 40 minutes of her wandering around Romania (or an approximation of Romania) occasionally speaking to local residents and a handful of times boarding a ‘Romanian Sex Train’ to try and find this mystery cult. Eventually, she stumbles on a contact who’s died while leaving an envelope for help and clutching a mysterious puzzlebox. And after a short time, Pinhead appears, tells her that the man in white has somehow gained access to ‘his domain’ and stolen an ability to ressurect the dead, in order to try and lead a war on the Cenobites. With Pinhead telling Amy she must confront the cult in order to put things to rest once and for all…cue another 30 minutes of hobbling around Romania and Romanian adjacent locations. Leading to a suffling finale, thats bizarrely the best part of the movie, and probably the worst moment in the Hellraiser franchise so far…

There is VERY little to like about ‘Hellraiser: Deader’ The script is absolutely sedentary, NOTHING really happens in this movie for a good hour of the runtime apart from random wandering around, Bad CGI jumpscares, the occasional bit of guarded nudity, and a little bit of covered up gore. The plot is uninspiring, uninteresting and frankly VERY dull. The dialogue sound stiff and awkward for the most part, the reasoning for the characters to be doing what they’re doing isnt really made all that clear, and what points have been clarified are frankly, quite stupid.

The tone is aiming for straight horror, but it tries to ‘overserious’ itself to the point that it just comes across as flat and really dull. There are elements of ‘Flatliners’ and ‘Elm Street’ transplanted into this film to try and bring some life to it, but its all in vein. The characters arnt interesting or well developed, the act structuring is lumpy for the opening act and then idling for the rest of the movie up until the end.

When they started making these DTV Hellraiser movies, I was cautiously optimistic around the idea of some kind of ‘investigator’ approaching the Cenobites and Lament configuration as an outsider having to piece together the hints and clues, until they’re too far down the rabbit hole to be able to back out…But we’re now 3 iterations into trying this style, and im astounded that its been able to go this catastrophically wrong, THREE whole times…when this should in theory be a pretty easy win.

The fact that Pinhead is in this film for less than 10 minutes ONCE AGAIN and essentially just takes on the role of a ‘hints and tips’ tutorial aid to the narrative is dissapointing. It once again feels like the folks at Miramax just rustled through their ‘rejected script’ files, pulled something out that narrowly avoided being commissioned and forced Pinhead and a Hellraiser-esq narrative into it. Its not even rage inducing at this point…Its just depressing.

The direction is aiming for arty and high aesthetic, but it just comes across as a bit ‘Nice Video; Shame about the song’. They use every plug in imaginable to try and filter the footage to look weird and distorted. And while I will give them some credit in the fact that they make the gore feel somewhat believable and not cheap looking. They counter that with CGI where there didnt need to BE CGI…and its aged horribly and looks terrible. From a directoral standpoint the cast and crew clearly understood the brief. The brief was ‘Im not being paid enough to care about this’ and the directors vision was ‘2nd year arthouse film student’.

The cine is passable…but stale…REALLY stale, theres just…nothing original going on in this film. Nothing memorable, nothing enjoyable, nothing that even makes me THINK of those heady days of the original film and ‘Hellbound’ it looks like someone ground this out over a week and that the editor was more interested in exploring the lunch menu than trying to make this thing come alive.

The performances are AWFUL. full on theater acting at almost every turn, NOTHING sounds naturalistic, NOTHING sounds believable and honestly? i’d say 90% of the performances in this are just irritating. Doug Bradley is the only probably exception here. Here? he actually performs better than the last 2 films. He gets a little bit more to do if nothing else…and even with THAT considered; he STILL sounds like he’s phoning it in…By this point he wasnt even really bothering to memorise the script, he would annotate and improvise the lines on set, because at this point HE knew the character better than the ACTUAL writers. which is Insane….

I also need to say what a HUGE step down the Cenobites have had over the last 3 movies. ‘Bloodline’ reintroduced some new Cenobites that actually looked interesting and had stuff going on…But for the last 3 films we’ve been treated to 2 different varients of ‘Chatterer’ one varient of ‘Butterball’ and a growing issue over the last 3 films, a generic ‘Smooth’ eyeless cenobite. Which is THE cheapest prosthetics…and that one version has had like…3 redesigns across the last 3 films, and here? that ones basically the default other than Pinhead…This series used to be brimming with creativity and mystery…and we’re just floundering SO hard here…

The soundtracks unremarkable, drone and midi orchestral fodder that just makes the whole thing feel SO cheap. and the cherry on top of this rancid sundae? The dialogue is mixed SO quiet into the sound mix that I basically had to watch the whole film with subtitles on, because the soundtrack blasts out any dialogue the second it revs up. Its basically inaudible.

Hellraiser: Deader commits the cardinal sin of cinema ‘Thou shalt not bore’. The ONLY reason to pick this film up is the final 5-10 minutes with Pinhead…which is still not great, but its above the quality of the rest of this movie. It upsets me profoundly when a film has a half okay idea and squanders it so carelessly. Deader is 88 minutes of timewasting and VERY little to show for it. Watch at your own peril, avoid if you have any sense.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hellraiser-deader/

Im going to keep this one brief because, honestly? I dont have that much to say. ‘Creepshow’ is a 1982 Anthology horror film written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero, both were basically riding high at this point in their relative fields, with Romero fresh off of ‘Knightriders’ with ‘Dawn of the dead’ and ‘Martin’ not that far behind it. and King somewhere between ‘Cujo’, ‘The Running Man’ and ‘Christine’. The pair struck up on the idea of making a movie literally in the style of the old horror comics of the 50s and 60s. and so King wrote a few original ideas and re-adapted a couple of his short stories into ‘comic style’ takes of his works. With a star studded cast to help really lift this thing up and above where it could have ended up.

We go through the film like flipping pages in a comic book, with stories of ressurected vengeful fathers, killer weeds from space, 150 year old killer yetis, a bug infestation and a tale of betrayal and bloody vengence.

I didnt really get around to ‘Creepshow’ till about 3-5 years ago when I chanced upon a VHS copy in amongst a haul of tapes I picked up. Creepshow infamously hasnt really had a release past VHS in the UK. and even then, the VHS copy is kind of hard to come by. But for spooky season this year? I decided to upgrade, picking up the 4k release from Scream factory, and it looks absolutely astounding.

The film itself is really good honestly, The stories are all consistently decent quality, with the best stories being incredibly solid and totally engrossing, and even the worst ones are still pretty watchable…if not a little slow paced. While I do take some issue with the 2 hour runtime (an unfortunate fact that means I may not watch this one again for a while…) Its a rock solid production, that isnt as good as the sum of its parts…PURELY for how MANY good parts there are in this. When you have Romero and King on writing and direction, and a cast that includes Ted Dansen, Leslie Nielsen Adrienne Barbaue, Tom Atkins, Tom Savini, Hal Holbrook and E.G Marshall, its kind of inevitable that their combined performances dont really match expectations…But thats okay! because they DO get BLOODY close!

Direction is rock solid, hyperstylised ‘comic book’ aesthetics give this film a real flare that helps it stand out against its contemporaries, It could have been easy for this to look cheap, but it has a kind of endearing ‘cardboard’ feel to it for the most part that I really quite enjoyed.

Shots are heavily considered to match the ‘comic’ aesthetic, and transitions that include fades in and out of the comic book frame, page turns and other novelties, really help give this a feelgood ‘Halloween’ spooky vibe. In many ways, I think this is probably a perfect movie for this time of year, just for how it balances actual true horror with that hokey spooky vibe that Halloween gives off.

The scorings superb. Honestly? barring the length of the movie and a couple of slower paced moments dribbed and drabbed across the runtime. I think this is a fantastic little film. Not one that I think i’d choose to watch regularly, but definitely one i’ll keep coming back to over the years. Highly recommended, especially around Halloween time. If you havent seen ‘Creepshow’ you really gotta change that!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/creepshow/1/

Nudist Coloney of the Dead may be one of Mark Piros most infamous films, covered multiple times over the last 2 decades by the youtube Commentariat, Its a…BIZARRE work or comedy horror, taking a total dedication to unrelenting silliness and marrying it up to a scathing swipe at religious zealotry. And…I kind of love it for that? At a time when a LOT of the media were taking ‘concerned christian parents’ VERY seriously, this film quite happily mocks them in a way that, on the surface is blunt, idiotic and irritating…But below the surface knows EXACTLY what its trying to do and say.

The premise is simple enough, the film, as mentioned is a Comedy Horror, and a musical to boot! as we open with a judge reckoning on a case where some puritan Christians are arguing that the owners of a local nudist colony are taking up precious land that could be used for pure wholesome activities with there…NAKED SIN!…The Nudists protest and provide meaningful evidence to the contrary, but the Judge rules in favour of the Christians and the camp is forced to close.

But the Nudists have one final plan up their sleeve, they plan a kool aid style cult suicide, and with their final breaths swear unholy vengence on ANY religious zealots that happen to wander onto their land. After which they all die and are promptly buried at the former Nudist site.

Some time passes and a local pastor is preaching to his congregation, promising revelation and spiritual purification to the parents of sex mad, drug addled, EVIL teenagers, by sending them on a Christian retreat in the woods. Several members of the congregation jump at the chance and send their kids off on the retreat, led by two dyed in the wool, unwavering Christian evangelists. The retreat is on the land that was formerlly the nudist colony.

Cue mad running around, THE most catchy earworm musical numbers, DOZENS of fake blood soaked limbs and VERY anti PC language. As religion and personal freedom clash in the most bizarre and over the top ways, likely ever put to screen.

My score for this film would be higher if not for one, frankly tragic and fatal issue with this film. Up front, the script is absolutely delightful, Im a fan of dumb humour when its done right, and the way its done right is to get smart people to write it. See…when a dumb person writes dumb humour, its insufferable. Because Dumb people just write what they THINK dumb humour should be…meaning its often garish, over the top…but most importantly, not funny, its annoying. Smart people see dumb people every day, and learn what makes dumb people funny…they also see dumb ideas and points being taken seriously every day by people often regarded as smart, which gives them the perfect balance of being able to write from the perspective of being able to see why ideas dumb people think are great…are in fact dumb. meaning they can lampoon dumb people, while also stealthily working in complex satirical commentary on present day dumb issues, without feeling like they’re preaching to the audience.

The writers for the early seasons of ‘The Simpsons’ are probably the best example of this, but Piro here has essentially done this with his script, but gone a bit more farcical as a result. At its core the film is an anti zealot, anti ‘moral panic’ film, and for about 75% of the runtime, that intention is soft baked in across the runtime. The folks who’d actually be offended by what this film had to say, would likely have stuck their nose up within the first 5 minutes when an old woman with comedically saggy breasts knocks out half the nudists. They likely would have swanned off before the titles even played.

Which is unfortunate, becuase the films a laugh riot, hitting the audience with dumb humour, smart humour, ultra catchy musical numbers and some decent subtext to chew over…especially in the year that is 2025. By the final 20 minutes of the film, we’ve shifted from a subtle but continuous jabbing, to just a flat out admission of the films intentions…with 5 minutes of that runtime being filled with a muscial number called ‘Kill All the Zealots’ Which…is kind of wonderful really.

The pacings absolutely breakneck, we career through 90(ish) minutes of a movie right here being unrelentingly bashed over the head with every type of comedy going, I dont think theres a 2 minute window in this whole movie where it isnt trying to do SOMETHING to make you laugh, and much like Piros previous films, there really is something for everyone.

The act structuring is a little bit on the sloppy side, this is, at the end of the day, still just ‘some folks running around in the woods’ for the most part. The first act is probably the most stable of the 3, it at least sets the premise up and gets things rolling. But the other 2 acts are kind of melted into each other and theres no clear shift up, or down, between the middle and final acts…mainly because its SO high energy, it would be stupid to ramp down…but they cant really ramp UP any higher than they are.

The characters are all farcical pastiches of horror archtypes, the ‘villains’ of the piece are equally bizarre and over the top. it can be a tad overwhelming at times. But in the right headspace all these characters are a hoot!

But! the praise does kind of have to end there, because of the aforementioned ‘tragic’ faults that this film has.

The first, simply put, is unfortunately the film dabbles inconsistently in racist language and stereotypes. Theres literally a character in this film called ‘Juan Tu’ who is supposed to be a half mexican, half japanese immigrant. he spends the entire runtime of the movie speaking in a racist asian accent, he’s portrayed doing stereotypical racist things like eating a hotdog with Chopsticks and just…knowing kung fu. and more aggregiously, he’s the butt of multiple hard slurs across the runtime, which were frankly winceworthy. I believe theres also some gay and other racial slurs used in the film too…which is a real shame and did pull the joy out of it a bit.

But the other tragic thing, that really hits this film hard is the technical issues with the production. According to the DVD release, large chunks (i’d say as much as 55-75% of the movie) were hit with technical issues that made the footage largely unwatchable, this ranges from shots being underlit to the point of darkness, crew members appearing in shots, the wrong frame rates being used…basically anything and everything you could think COULD go wrong while filming a movie DID seem to go wrong here. For the original release, it couldnt really be corrected. So folks just had to…accept that over half their movie was basically unwatchable.

But for the DVD release. Mark Piro decided to try and fix it. and the way he’s tried to do that is by splicing out the problematic film scenes and recreating them with behind the scenes footage shot on video tape when the ACTUAL takes were being done. In any other movie, this would have made the film as unwatchable, if not MORE unwatchable than just leaving in the problematic footage. Here, its a bit more accepted/understandable…But it still renders the film a bizarre viewing experience.

The VHS footage doesnt look anything like the film footage, its in a different aspect ratio to the film footage, Piro here has decided to crop the film footage into widescreen, despite it being pretty close to 4:3 orignally…but NOT to crop ALL the VHS footage into widescreen, meaning the film bounces around in different aspect ratios for the full runtime. sometimes on a cut by cut basis within a sequence.

The film footage appears to have been sourced from an original VHS copy of ‘Nudist colony of the dead’ and Piro appears to have had a go at re-grading it, leading to huge sections of crushed blacks, weird artifacting and heavy overcontrasting. and the behind the scenes replacement footage varies wildly in quality, from some replacements looking and feeling totally at home, with no sense of anything being amiss. To moments where its clear the camera was set up next to the crew, and Piro has had to heavily crop and zoom into the footage to remove people out of the frame.

This presentation is a real dogs dinner of a production, but Piro considers this the ‘Directors cut’ and in a message to the viewer at the start of the film, it notes that he considers this ‘the way the film should be seen.’ …So I dont know, I reckon with the revelations in modern digital editing, if the original film elements of this movie still exist, a proper restoration could probably be feasable with much less interference…As it stands, its incredibly distracting in my opinion as it is, and…while the films style lends itself to this weird bouncing around in the edit. I think i’d much prefer to see this get a 2k scan, some decent colour correction and an attempt to save the damaged footage if im honest.

Other than that the performances are goofy, over the top, cheesy, corny, the works. its a manic production and not one person fails the assingment. Couple that with a HELL of a cheap tinny synth soundtrack, with musical numbers that WILL get stuck in your head TILL YOU DIE. And I have to say I have a real soft spot for ‘Nudist Colony of the dead’ My hope is that at some point a proper restoration of this can be done. Because I think restoring it back to its original aspect ratio, in HD, and with the tools to attempt a proper grade on it. I could easily see this become my favourite Mark Piro film.

Definitely recommended, ESPECIALLY if you like Smart/dumb humour. Its been too long since I last watched this one…and I wont make that mistake again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/nudist-colony-of-the-dead/1/

After recently watching ‘Insidious’ My partner decided for tonights movie night to check out the other jumpscare ‘hot property’ of the 2010s. ‘Sinister’ a film that, i’d heard some pretty good things about myself over the years, but hadnt really got around to checking out…and, for the most part, I was pretty pleasently surprised!

The plot follows true crime novellist Ellison Oswald, Ellison last had a hit 10 years ago, and after a string of failed releases has chanced one last roll of the dice, moving his family to Pennsylvania to explore the story of a missing child and her murdered family, hoping that he’ll be able to uncover some new information, or better yet; solve the crime, so that he can make it big, and spend the rest of his life financially secure with his family…the only hangup? Ellison didnt tell his family that the house they were moving into was in fact, the house that the murdered family lived in…and that the murder was fairly recently.

The only people who do know what Ellisons done, are the local law enforcement who think its a bit of a sick joke, and tell Ellison up front to watch himself because they dont want any trouble…and the locals who slowly tease information out to Ellisons family, and give them the evil eye on multiple occasions.

But Ellison presses on, setting up his office ready to start working on figuring out exactly what happened. But on taking some boxes up to the attic, he discovers theres already a box up there labelled ‘Home Movies’ on bringing them down, he finds an old 8mm home movie projector and a selection of 8mm films with names like ‘Pool Party’ and ‘Mowing the lawn’…He decides to play one to see whats on the reels, and after a few moments of family home movie type fodder, the film harshley cuts to a brutal act of murder. Ellison slowly begins to realise, that whatever he’s watching here may be tied to the murders he’s looking into, and so he decides to dig deeper into the footage to try and figure out exactly what he’s looking at.

Pairing up with the deputy of the local sheriffs office, he begins to piece together the murders, finding demonic links embedded into the film itself, and a cultish undercurrent that may (or may not) link all the murders to a single killer. But with his family life beginning to spiral as the town begin to open up more about exactly WHAT Ellisons gotten them into. Ellison begins to come under increasing stress and pressure. and when a mysterious presence begins to make itself known in the house, things go from bad to downright horrifying.

Going into this one, I’d heard good things, but I wasnt exactly excited. at an hour and 51 minutes long, I thought this one may have me ‘clock watching’ before too long, and the fact that this is often lumped in with ‘Insidious’ as a bit of a ‘jumpscare’ centric production had me internally groaning a bit, as I figured the long runtime and jumpscare obsession basically translated to a bum numbing experience punctuated by cheap scares.

But theres actually a bit more going on with ‘Sinister’ than I expected. It still didnt quite astound me or anything, but I came away from it actually kind of glad I checked it out. The scripts VERY slow burn, but unlike a lot of films from this era, the slow burn nature in combination with the direction really helped create a slow mounting sense of tension and dread. its an incredibly atmospheric film in places and the plotting, while slow, didnt feel painful to me…I fully believe this film would have been higher rated had it been 90 minutes rather than 112, but whats here, for the most part, is pretty good!

The tone is a wonderful malevolence all the way through, steeping the audience in claustrophobic and analogue horror scenery, that I really found quite engaging. The characters are all pretty nicely multi layered (something that I think is missing from a lot of films from this era) its as much a psycho-thriller about an author slowly losing his mind to the stresses of potential failure, as it is a straight paranormal horror film. and the mixture of psychological horror, paranormal horror, thriller elements and the aforementioned jumpscares, actually mixes together into a rather solid work all things considered.

The act structuring is pretty solid, establishing all the tools the audience needs in the first act to crack on, it revs up in the second act, leading to a 3rd act thats maybe a little too high on tension/low on scares. But (and this is the crucial thing) for me, it ended actually pretty solidly. So many films from the late 2000s and early 2010s could do temporary horror or tension and then bomb on the landing…So this one just about managing to hold it together and deliver something (mostly) satisfying? I think is a really good job.

Direction wise. Im going to keep it simple here, its a studio picture, so it already meets the absolute base standards needed to be an acceptable viewing experience. My problem with this is that the directional style falls into two silos. Its a 33% mesh of shots that look very aesthetically pleasing, are well coloured and…while maybe not the most adventurous direction in the world, is still enagaging and pretty well handled…to 66% DEEPLY underlit to almost pitch black footage. Seriously, I dont know how anyone could watch the DVD version of this film, as for the vast majority of it you’ll either be watching a black screen, or at most about 20% of the screen will be dimly lit with the cast feintly framed…We watched a HD copy and even then we were struggling with the murkey darkness. I think a 4k copy may ACTUALLY be the only way to SEE this damn movie.

On the cine front, Again, its good! shots are fairly well compsed (when you can see whats going on) they dont shy away from experimentation with composition and scene layout, as I mention, they arnt exactly pushing any boundaries here. But it was a comfy watch to just sit and get immersed into. Lighting was a bit of an issue, and Im still not a champion of that terrible mid 2000’s onwards trend of desaturating the whole film to give it a washed out ‘murky water’ colour grade. I like my horror vibrant and visually pleasing!

Sequences are well cut together, theres some nice effects work that I think is handled really well, the edit is razor tight. Im honestly surprised this film doesnt get held up more often from that perspective, as there were genuinely some fun horror moments through this film, that I feel get a bit overlooked honestly.

Performance wise, Ethan Hawke gives a great turn as Ellison, he comes across as genuine, sincere and for the most part I thought he played it quite naturalistically…Though I do think he struggled a bit with more anger driven moments. he went big during those scenes, when I think a quieter approach may have served him better. But otherwise? I thought he was a solid lead.

The rest of the supporting cast are all pretty solid as well…No notes really, I just kind of sort of enjoyed hanging around with the people in this story, I dont think any of them performed particualrly badly, and on the whole I think the cast got the assignment and nailed more or less all of it.

And the soundtrack? A little unremarkable if im honest, its the era of drone and sampling older corny tunes, twisting them into horror pieces. What I really liked about Sinister is the fact they utilise silence so well, its rare to see a mainstream film do it so often, but here. They really do use silence and drone well to help keep things feeling extra spooky!

All in all, I liked Sinister. But thats not to say it doesnt have its problems. its a long LONG movie that I feel DESPERATELY needed a shorter cut to fully win me over, throw in a couple of plot beats that I felt didnt quite play true to how real people would behave and the questionable lighting choices, and you have a film that I think i’d absolutely watch again…But maybe not with my full attention. I’d say its definitely worth checking out at least once. But temper your expectations, and I think you’ll enjoy it more for it.

All I can say is, its got me curious to check out the sequel…So it must have done something right!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sinister/