TYTD Reviews

I was really hoping that with a rewatch of 1972’s ‘Night of the Strangler’ that I might have been able to enjoy it a little more than the first time around. The first time I watched it I was completley nonplussed by it honestly, I found it overly slow with only a few moments really of any interest and it was kind of dissatisfying…With only Micky Dolenz cheeky ‘special guest’ appearence being the reason to check this out. Having now rewatched it…I cant say my thoughts on it have changed all that much.

The plots a kind of ‘proto slasher’ but it’s a ‘Whodunnit’ with ‘Blaxploitation’ elements at it’s core. As we’re introduced to Vance, Dan and Denise. the group have been brought together after the untimely death of their father and while catching up Denise reveals that she’s going to be dropping out of school, effectively throwing away her rather expensive scholarship and education, because she wants to get married…and she pregnant. and her partners a black guy.

Vance is incredibly supportive of Denise though, a little less than happy shes throwing away her education. But Dan, the eldest brother (and also a MASSIVE racist) is apoplectic. Accusing Denise of throwing away her life and her lineage, before beating the everloving crap out of her, swearing vengence against her and disowning her.

Denise heads back to the city to be with her partner, where its revealed that Dan’s put a hit on Denises partner, who gets blown away while the pair are enjoying a picnic in the park.

A short while later, while Denise is taking a bath, an unseen killer enters her apartment and drowns her. causing tremendous distress to Vance and mild disruption to Dan.

But things start to get a bit interesting when the killings dont stop there. Dans bride to be is killed which sends him into an alcoholic stupor and the bodies continue to pile up from there. Eventually a friend of Vance’s, a black priest on vacation drops in to hang with the family and catch up on whats been happening…Only to run acropper with Dan and for things to get rather frosty.

As the cope begin to piece together the murders and gather evidence, ANYONE could be the killer. with a final act and reveal that quite literallly had me on the edge of my seat…because I couldnt see my clock…I wanted to know when this movie was going to end.

The scripts kind of nebulous honestly, the plots not a bad idea, but the actual way its written feels incredibly loose, badly structured and more like a series of happenings than an actual coherent movie. The main plot of this film with the cops, Vance and his priest friend and the killer feel like islands lost in a sea of random uninteresting exposition and padding. this things 90 minutes on the nose and you could easily lose 30 minutes of it and STILL have room to cut. Its a short film, something that feels like it wasnt developed past the ‘Pitch’ stage, dragged out WAY beyond its normal runtime. and it’s painful to sit through for the most part…

Dont get me wrong, when the film remembers its main plot and gets back on track, it can be really quite good fun! but those moments are very few and far between and long sequences of ‘negotiations’ are about as well recieved here as frying pan to the head.

The tone is kind of difficult to read too, on the one hand, it feels like it wants to explore darker terratory like ‘The New York Ripper’ or ‘Black Christmas’, but then; at the same time it doesnt really commit to it, preferring instead to go for ‘somewhat gritty’ over something that feels altogether more real. This is a movie that prefers to shout racist rhetoric for 20 minutes, than actually SHOW or DEAL with any kind of gore or kill scene…and I find that wild.

The characters are super one dimensional, and when your ‘Whodunnit’ relies on well written and well rounded characters to help add a bit more complexity and nuance to proceedings. NOT having that there is a disaster waiting to happen. As such we’re stuck in a movie of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ where the film isnt even ballsy enough to BOTHER doing anything like a plot twist of a good guy turning out to be a bad guy, or anything of that ilk.

The ending is kind of dissatisfying, you’ll either guess who the killer is within 20 minutes of the film playing, or you wont guess and when it’s revealed will call shenanigans on it because its a reach.

All in all, its a mess of a script with poor to no act structuring, badly written characters a predictable plotting, bad pacing, barely any twists or turns and not even any good kills to help carry the thing. its just a series of islands floating in padding.

The direction and cine dont fair much better either, the direction is chronically dull, all locked off shots, all flood lit, no styalization, no creative zeal, this thing was shot for basic function and nothing else. the cast all seem fairly confused on where to be or what to do, theres no sense of them having any creative say in how to do the scenes and it really feels like the crew, for the most part, were working entirely independently of each other.

The cines worse still, ignoring the heavy print damage and overly grainy footage for the time being. composition is badly formed with no attention to detail, the film doesnt care about crossing the line, at least a third of this thing isnt focussed correctly and looks soft. b-roll was thin on the ground, resulting in long running sequences that make the padding even more insufferable. And it really does come to something when my immediate thoughts on the credits rolling were ‘Wow…the titles and credits were the nicest looking part of this thing!’

its a poor show, a really loose edit containing badly shot footage with no sense of style or direction in sight.

The performances arguably are the best part of this thing, With Dolenz playing anxiety ridden and panicked for half the movie and totally wasted off booze for the other half. He does a decent enough job, he’s no oscar player, but I enjoyed seeing him on screen and I thought he approached the role with relish.

James Ralston as Dan is probably the show stealer. He’s basically been asked to play the meanest nastiest racist he possibly can, and again. he REALLY gets into the role, more than meets the brief and when he isnt just sitting around, he’s easily the most watchable character in this thing.

The other cast members are solid too, though the further removed from the main action to you the quality of their performances sharply drop off too. It sounds stupid to say, but its almost like the less important the character was to the scene, the less effort the director took with them, to the point that…once they passed a certain level of unimportant…they were on their own. Again, that sounds like standard practice. But a good director treats even his least important speaking character with the same quality as he would his star. because a poor performance from ANYONE instantly will pull people out of the moment, and good directors acknowledge that.

The soundtracks alright, its got a couple of actually pretty solid tracks in here, but im pretty sure these are all library sourced. Ultimatley; this one wasnt for me, one or two twists and a couple of good performances couldnt save a DAMN slow and uninteresting script, bad direction, poor visuals a bloated edit and stocky sounding scoring.

Its just dull, I can only really recommend it to folks who want to see someone from ‘The Monkees’ act like an alcoholic on the verge of a total mental breakdown. Otherwise…Pass.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/night-of-the-strangler/

With the ‘Tommy Jarvis’ arc firmly put to bed, Part 7 seemingly was somewhat floundering with what to do with the franchise now that they’d pretty much exhausted the ‘Hocky Mask killer stalks teens in the woods’ genre of film making…I can only assume that Jason being ressurected as a Zombie in ‘Part 6’ gave the producers enough dutch courage to eek into the supernatural a bit more by asking the question: ‘What If Jason fought Carrie?’

Because thats kind of what this movie is, as we follow telekenetik teen ‘Tina’ who, after having had her powers commence at an awkward moment that unfortunately resulted in her fathers untimely death, is riddled with trauma and isnt exactly sure how to control her powers now shes in adolesence.

Her mother, sends her out to a facility near Camp Crystal Lake, where the on site doctor is promising to study and treat these psychic abilities with care and compassion. Unfortunately the doctors there seem more intent in antagonizing Tina into using her powers, than helping her control them. After one outburst too many her abilities run amock and in the process the chains that have bound Jason to the bottom of Crystal Lake are broken and he’s able to rise to the surface and continue his chaos.

…Oh! and next door to the psychic doctors office, theres a group of teens setting up for a birthday party for one of their friends. You can guess what happens next…

And its at this point in the Friday the 13th franchise that I start to go crosseyed in trying to figure out exactly when the HELL any of this is supposed to ACTUALLY be taking place. With the first film having happened in June 1979, the second taking place not long after in the summer of 1980, part 3 takes place (possibly) in the summer of 1981. Then part 4 happens IMMEDIATELY after part 3, so still summer ’81, Part 5 jumps 5 years into the future to bring us in line with the year that film came out (1985), Part 6 takes place a year after that in ’86…And this film opens 3 months after the events of Part 6 (so Fall ’86) with a Young Tina, before then jumping forward in time 7 and a half years to what is presumably Summer 1993…This film came out in 1988…and Part 8 happens 1 year after this one which means its 1994 in 1989 aaaaaand there goes those crosseyes…

While there isnt all that much in originality in ‘Part 7’. The best way I can describe it is ‘It looks back at the previous films, pinches the best bits and just makes something fairly solid’ and thats basically what this is.

You have a script thats…Not the strongest work in the world and very derivitive, but it IS entertaining, it has its moments and I think its better than AT LEAST half of the films in this franchise on this level alone. The pacings a little slower than previous entries, but what it lacks in build up, it more than makes up for in the 3rd act finale.

Tonally, its a bit more subdued than parts 5 and 6, but we do have some interesting and animated characters, this film isnt afraid to use a little bit of humour here and there and the kills are pretty good fun.

It has a clean 3 act structure with decent transitions between the acts, it takes its time in getting you from scene to scene, which I could see how it would annoy some people, but I was okay with that.

The direction isnt as sharp as ‘Jason Lives’. Because the scripts a bit thinner on the ground than previous entries it kind of lacks a strong vision on that front, which then has a knock on in being able to generate a strong vision within the visuals. That being said, the kills and the final showdown sequence are absolute highlights of this entry and easily some of the series high points.

Direction of the cast is a bit flat, it seems the only directions were where the edge of the frames were, because cast members dont really interact with their surroundings very much, DO seem a little bit lost and it really takes time for these characters to warm up when compared to previous entried.

The cine is actually kind of solid, again; its not *quite* as creatively charged as parts 5 and 6, but it DOES have a destinct stylization in mind and there are a lot of shots here that are visually very interesting and compositionally sound.

Sequences seem fairly well constructed with plenty of B-roll, its nice to see this entry doesnt shy away from using a bit of colour here and there rather than the washed out offerings from earlier entries. and the kill scenes are well choreographed and quite interesting too. Though, I do also have to add that the ‘telekenesis’ used in this did raise a chuckle as I couldnt stop thinking of the ‘Garth Marenghis: Darkplace’ episode ‘Hell Hath Fury’ with some items clearly flying on fishing wire. Its so corny.

The performances are a bit of a mixed bag, a lot of the cast dont really seem to know what tone to go for (I.E: whether this should be a ‘Part 4’ style of performance, or a ‘Part 5’ style of performance) Lara Park Lincoln is probably the best of the bunch here as Tina, she works a decent enough range…But even then shes not the strongest lead this series has ever had.

Throw in some fairly unmemorable scoring which, to my ears, didnt sound THAT much different from the score used for the first 3 movies and you ultimatley end up with a film that is inoffensive. The scripts not bad, but it doesnt break new ground, the direction and cine have their moments, but theres nothing jaw dropping and the cast do what they can…but what they can do is just kind of acceptable.

If Inoffensive is the worst this film gets, then I WILL take it as a win…But at the same time, an ‘inoffensive’ ‘Friday the 13th’ movie is a bit like a chocolate teapot…nice…but ultimately kinda pointless.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-part-vii-the-new-blood/

Caught it in the cinema tonight, even better with a live audience and seeing it blown up reveals so many more subtleties in the performances, it’s ace really…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-return-of-the-living-dead/1/

Probably the closest to an unsettling dream captured on film that I’ve ever seen. ‘Carnival of Blood’ (1972)…(Not to be confused with ‘Carnival of Blood (1973) ) Is a hazy, feverish experience to sit through. And; much like a dream its incoherent, messy, all consuming and woozy.

Theres a loose plot running through this thing about a serial killer who’s picking off victims at a fun fair. But the main…’experience’ from this film is the unpleasently drunk feeling vibe, as we follow a handful of characters as they deleriously rumble through various…happenings for lack of a better word until either they’re picked off by the killer, or end up having some kind of psychopathic breakdown.

highlights include (but arnt limited to) an arguing married couple who go on a date to the fair, where one of them doenst want to be there and the other one painfully tries to drag him onto more and more rides as he visibly gets more and more irritated. A local drunk who hooks up with a young lady at the fair, tries to win her a prize and ends up having an existential, and a recently engaged couple who hear about decapitations occring on the fairs ‘ghost train’ ride, and decide to go undercover to see whats what.

Its a grimey, gritty and deeply unpleasent experience to sit through, the script quite honestly feels like it was written sober and edited drunk, the pacing is consistent, but because the actual story is really more a series of happenings. its less that the films leading you through its 3 acts, and more that the films run you over and is now dragging you from its bumper across the 3 acts whether you like it or not.

The tone is all over the place, with hyper campy weirdness being intercut with genuinely unpleasent performances and heavy gore (with THE fakest blood you’ve ever seen in your life. It makes ‘Hammer blood’ look positively monotone.) The characters all read like they’ve been inhaling carbon monoxide while workshopping them and this is a film that just kind of…Stops. which only adds to the ‘otherworldly’ quality of it.

The direction is totally unprincipled. theres no real emphasis on an intentional style in the direction of this piece. But unintentionally, this film feels like a beast unto itself. A lot of the film appears to have been shot freehand, most shots are balanced or stabalized and the camera is prone to swing around feverishly. It feels INCREDIBLY chaotic as a work, which only adds to the nightmarish dreamy quality of proceedings.

The cine is kind of hard to guage because of how rowdy and unpredictable the direction is. Shots dont seem to have a considered compositional choosing. It largely looks like they were framed for necessity or “because it looked good enough”. It doesnt help either that the print AGFA have scanned for their recent release of it, looks like its been dragged across a multi story carpark several times and left out in the open air for a month. Its horrendous quality with VERY faded colours, scratches, dirt, grime. At times I fully expected to see a ‘Reel Missing’ caption or some kind of snap given just how mangled this thing looks. It absolutley adds to the ambience of the presentation, but It makes it hard to really truely gauge exactly what the film makers were trying to do.

Outside of that, theres a fair bit of B-roll that does help break up the sequences (though they insist on reusing several shots multiple times) the edit here is incredibly fast, loose and almost as chaotic as the direction with cuts that should qualify as ‘Assault’ in some states and a breakneck manic energy that genuinely brought on a sense of delerium.

All the cast are rigid as boards and deliver their lines with the vibe that cue cards are just off screen. They dont utilise the set space well and it only makes the 3rd act even weirder when the killer is revealed and they’re just very plain and dry through their whole performance.

Comparisons to the works of David Lynch or Chris Morris’s ‘Jam’ are probably plentiful when it comes to discussing this work, But I honestly havent seen anything quite so fever dream inducing in a good few years. Im not sure if I enjoyed it or not, nor do I want to revisit it again for a while. But Im certain i’ve seen something here thats very different from the norm, and that appeals to me.

Would almost certainly pair up well as the A-Feature to ‘Blood Shack’…now THAT’S a back handed compliment.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/carnival-of-blood/

After ‘Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning’ failed to set the box office goers socks on fire, the decision was made to pull the plug on that particular pathway that would have seen Tommy Jarvis taking up the ‘Jason’ Mantle…And instead we arrive at ‘Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives’ probably the film I have the most complex relationship with out of the entire franchise.

The plot pretty much retcons the end of Part 5, opening with the news that in between the last film and this one, Tommy has been in a mental hospital and has somehow managed to convince a doctor or intern to bust him out as he feels a big part of overcoming his trauma from Jason, is to see Jasons dead body and destroy it, knowing once and for all that he really is gone.

The pair arrive at the cemetary, break open the casket and a maggot ridden Jason lies in wake. Tommy on seeing the body has a trauma response and immediately starts wailing on Jason with a metal rod, which by sheer bad luck, gets hit by lightning, ressurecting our Hocky mask weilding killer as an ultra strong and seemingly indestructable ‘Zombie’ varient (the varient that’ll now pretty much be THE Jason we have to deal with for every foreseeable entry).

Jason picks off Tommys friend and after a brief scuffle Tommy manages to make it back to his truck where he speeds into town to warn the police. Who immediatley brand him a wacko and lock him in a cell to be dealt with later.

Its here that the real plot kicks in as the sheriffs daughter is one of several teens heading up to the newly renamed Lake Forest Green (Formally ‘Crystal Lake’) to set up the camp ahead of a group of school kids turning up to enjoy summer shenanigans (I honestly cant believe it took 6 entries and 7 years to have a Jason movie set at a summer camp that ACTUALLY HAS kids at camp…wild…)

Anyway; Jason gets back into town, the sheriffs daughter meets Tommy and the pair hit it off, and the rest of the plots basically the usual runaround with Tommy trying to escape police custody to fight Jason and the campers finding the pointy end of Jason’s Machete.

And realistically; I find this film really quite polarizing. On the one hand, after ‘Part 5’, I find this script deathly dull. Barring the introduction of ‘Zombie’ Jason and a couple of tongue in cheek funny moments, I feel like the scripts tipped too far into comedy tonally and has wound up largely just being kind of irritating while also doing very little in the way of breaking new ground.

I get that with ‘Part 5’ being a commercial failure, that they wanted to play it overly safe for the next entry. But this is painfully generic as far as ‘Friday’ movies go. We’re back to councillors just filling time with talking fairly generic nonsense, uninteresting characters who exist just ‘because’, the kids might as well be inanimate objects for how much they bring to proceedings, the tone feels really off to me, not quite getting serious enough to leave me feeling like I watched a horror film, too irritatingly sitcom funny to really appeal in the other regard either.

The pacing is lumpy, distinctly uneven as we lurch from scenario to scenario and even though this is the shortest entry so far (clocking in at an hour and 27) it somehow feels longer than almost all the previous entries and could easily have lost 20 to 30 minutes with no significant loss to plot.

Contrasting the mediocre scripting however, we have arguably some of the best direction and cine that the series has ever (to date) had. Which is almost entirely down to Tom McLoughlin, the guy has a love of horror cinema and in particular a solid appreciation for the black and white era of horror.

This entry showcases that love with a stylization that is perfectly suited to the old ‘Universal’ monster movies of the 30s,40s and 50s. In fact McLoughlin has stated in interviews that the film was originally supposed to be presented in Black and white until the studio nixxed the idea at the 11th hour.

Its a visual feast with several iconic shots, some astoundingly original compositional choices and a keen eye to detail. The edit, while overlong is made of sequences that are very precisely managed, they breath nicely, keep a good pace and have a good comedic timing (even if the comedy itself is largely bad). its easily one of the prettiest Friday the 13th movies ever made in my opinion.

The performances are kind of middle of the road, our camp councillors might as well be avatars for the amount of emoting or deep character detail thats featured here. Most of that can be levvied at a script that seemingly was more interested in kills than making people stand out, but the cast too are fairly stiff, a bit flat on delivery, dont utilize their space as well as they could do and pretty much the second the credits had rolled, i’d already forgotten who they were…they’re that memorable.

The soundtracks ‘Iconic’ but I wont say its good. make of that what you will.

The concluding part of the ‘Tommy Jarvis’ trilogy is, to me at least; a somewhat tepid offering. Bringing a very strong visual identity to a script that really kind of missed the boat. The cast flounder through 87 minutes of this, with only Thom Mathews as Tommy himself managing to really keep the thing afloat.

I cant actively say this is a bad movie because of just how interesting and fun the visuals are and because of the loose handful of moments that are interesting in the script…But broadly speaking, this isnt one of my favourites and wouldnt be my first ‘go to’ pick for a ‘Friday the 13th’ marathon.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-part-vi-jason-lives/

With a title that sounds like the kind of joke offering that would turn up on Jay Shermans show in ‘The Critic’. It was literally only the knowledge that ‘Pride and Prejudice…and Zombies’ was a film adaptation of a highly successful range of books that made me hit play on this thing…In hindsight I should have left it in the charity shop I found it in…UNOPENED I might add…

The plot BROADLY speaking is the same as the 19th century novel, only now theres the introduction of Zombie outbreaks across most of England and our sisters have all been training in Chinese martial arts. it deviates more and more from the original source as it goes along, but all ties back together by the end…and thats kind of this films biggest problem.

It has a serious case of identity crisis. Its a period piece AND a zombie movie…but it’s period elements have all the charm of an unenthusiastic BBC adaptation, and the zombie/horror elements feel fiercely underplayed. Leading to an end product that I dont feel will really appeal to either party. The period fans will feel like the zombie elements and lack of respect for the source material is in bad taste, while the zombie horror fans absolutely WONT sit through the 19th century affairs of the Bennet Sisters…

The script utterly DRAGS on almost every level. I was honestly surprised to learn that the original author apparently had a close hand in shaping this film, because it seems to almost represent the antithisis of what the books represented. What we have here is a very dry production that almost seems to want to shy away from the Zombie/Horror/Kung Fu Bennets element that makes the thing worth watching.

The pacing is beyond a crawl as we slowly and painfully work through what can most sincerely be described as a sighing attempt at period work. Theres been a complete misreading of the tone, this should have been a campy, over the top, jet black comedy with oodles of gore, silly moments and energy as we watch these characters from much loved works of fiction, get thrust into a scenario thats COMPLETELY tonally opposed to what the original work offered.

Instead; we get a meek offering that feels WAY too wedded to the original source material and tries to play it as straight as possible. And dont get me wrong, I can appreciate that sometimes taking a ‘Straight man’ approach to something inherently silly can, in and of itself, make something even funnier. But here, it just results in an incredubly dry offering. Theres maybe one or two isolated momets where them playing a jokey bit straight laced actually works. But for the bulk of the film, it feels like the martial arts and zombies are an inconvenience that the period piece has to just sort of…deal with every 10 minutes…rather than an intigrated and involved part of the narrative.

The act structuring is there, the core elements of a passable script are there, they’ve just been handled so poorly in translation to the screen that they’ve totally missed that POINT of what the book was about. absurdism…and this things about as absurd as magnolia. It clocks in at 102 minutes and you feel every second of that 102 minutes as if it were twice that.

The direction is messy, bland and incoherent, theres a standard to this production…but ‘just bearly holding it together’ from a studio is a woeful endeavour make no mistake. Its a film that trades heavily on post colour correction to give it a style, and I can honestly say that there were better offerings floating around on youtube at the time…which is stunning to think honestly.

Theres no sense of artistic vision here, everythings been shot seemingly for function or because it looked like a cool idea at the time. which has resulted in a tonally disjointed work that, by the 45 minute mark left me asking why I was watching…

Its the cine really where I take the most umbridge. Because the film is kind of seperate into two sections, the period bits and the horror bits. It makes it a bit cleaner for me to talk about them both.

The period bits are bland, they’re shot without any creative relish or interest. if you fed the BBCs period piece output from 1985 – 2013 into an AI generator, this would be the movie that would come out. Theres nothing new to it, no moment where I thought ‘oh this is nice!’ just…total mediocrity across the board as we drudge through the same types of locations, using the same types of shots we’ve seen over and over again. Its. DULL.

The horror elements dont fair much better either, with HEAVY use of CG on everything from the zombie effects to blood sprays and stabbings, most of the horror sequences are tinted dark blue or gray so you IMMEDIATLEY know its a zombie bit. again, shots are drab, lifeless. Nothing we havent seen in zombie related media in the last 15 or so years. its totally uninspired and lacked any real kind of depth or attention.

and only compounding the issues further, the fight scenes and martial arts sequences…Which are supposed to be the main thing to try and hype up the audience…are just SO badly shot and edited it becomes almost headache inducing. This is a film that feels that quick cuts automatically equal fast paced action…rather than it just looking like someone dumped a load of B-roll into a blender and then assembled what survived into 10 second bursts.

Its totally disorienting and left me wondering what I was even watching whenever it was on screen. This combined with the seeming reluctance to even WANT to have martial arts zombie battles just makes what little is there feel even less like it belongs.

The edit is just…awful. the basics are there in terms of cuts, but theres been no thought or consideration as to why. I honestly can say, this could have lost 40 minutes off the runtime easily and still have felt over long, sequences breath till they pass out basically. and the actual interesting bits flounder because of the seeming demand for the period piece elements to be front and center. Its such a dissapointment.

I cant fault the cast particularly, though they do feel a little ‘BBC’ in quality which is a *little* down market for a studio production, same goes for the scoring really which again, isnt bad..but isnt studio grade.

I just feel like this one was a massively fumbled ball. Had it been raw-er, more open to embracing the gore and heavy black comedy elements, more interested in taking a self aware look at itself and less bothered about offending people who likely were already going to be offended at the bastardization of Jane Austins work…Oh! and more willing to actually trying to merge the two genres its working with together, rather than it just being ‘period bit…zombie bit…period bit…zombie bit…period bit (with some martial arts…oooh.)…zombie bit.’ This could have been a completely different story.

As it stands…well, im glad its off my shelf.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies/

Watched on Saturday October 7, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evil-dead-rise/1/

Much derided on its initial release, I remember a lot of hate being sent ‘Evil Dead’ (2013)’s way. With the general consensus being that it wasn’t as ‘edgey’ as the original, wasn’t as memorable as the original and didn’t do enough to really modernise the original story. Some critics even went as far as to try and question the point of its existence, with this being released just towards the dying gasps of the ‘torture porn’ era of horror cinema.

But watching this again now with 10 years hindsight, I’m actually really quite impressed at just how solid this picture really is.

While it is true that the film does follow *some* of the key beats of the original, it deviates pretty quickly into its own beast, and while there are plenty of Easter eggs and callbacks to the original series scattered throughout, this isn’t a film that’s beholden to the originals, which I think really works in its favour (and probably contributed to so many people disliking it because ‘reference/in joke = good movie’ to some folks apparently…

For those of you not familiar with the plot, the film follows a group of friends who’ve decided to take their struggling friend Mia into the woods as part of a detox/cold turkey session in order to overcome heroin addiction.

While there she’s met by her long estranged brother and it’s revealed the pair have a fractious past. Anyway, after a little bit of tension, one of the friends finds a blood splattered hatch in the living room and on heading down into the cellar they find disgusting scenes of what looks like a demonic ritual of some kind.

One of the friends finds a book bound in skin, he translates some of the book and reads it out loud, yadda yadda yadda, dedites from the bowels of hell emerge and slowly kill off the cabin folk, yadda yadda yadda ‘I’ll swallow your soul’.

The first time I caught this one (around 2017), I was kind of non plussed…it was a fine enough film, but I didn’t think it really went far enough in showing just how hideously demented and graphic modern dedites could be. I didn’t much care for the dedite redesign or the washed out colourless aesthetic and the end was a bit of a buzz kill after 90 minutes of chaos, ending on a whisper, rather than a bang.

On rewatching it tonight however, while I do still have some reservations. I have to say that I really quite enjoyed this one!

I think my biggest gripes here are still pretty much that the Deadites don’t look nearly as gnarley as they did in the first 2 films, and it would have been nice to see something a little bit more abstract in design than just ‘pale with contact lenses in and sometimes a little bludgeoned’

Equally; I do still feel like the ending is a bit of a fizzle out rather than a grand closing. And I do wish there was a bit more colour range here than the washed out murkiness we ultimately got.

That being said, what we do have here is another rock solid entry in the ‘Evil Dead’ franchise, that pretty much manages to succeed in every other level.

The scripts zippy, solidly paced, with characters who are just about deep enough to make me care what happens with them, its tonally more in line with the original than say; ‘Evild Dead 2’ or ‘Ash vs the Evil Dead’ and while this thing is oppressively bleak in places. It still manages to contrast that utter darkness with some pitch black comedy creating a wonderful multi layer experience.

The pacing is near perfect, the act structuring is solid with clean and subtle transitions, the dialogue is mostly rock solid and barring some moments where the characters IQ seems to artificially drop through the floor in order to keep the narrative going. This is just a really solid work that had absolutely improved with age.

While I’m not the biggest fan of the ‘murkey’ era of horror. The period where saturation seemed to be the enemy of most horror filmmakers who instead wanted there works washed out, brown or gray and very little else. Here? I have to say there’s a really solid creative vision behind this thing, it’s heavily stylized, and…given its a studio grade picture, the cine and direction at worst, meet the standard and at best it thoroughly impressive.

Shots are solidly composed, there’s plenty of experimentation on hand and the effects shots here are easily some of the best the 2010s had to offer with some genuinely wince inducing scenes that are guaranteed to cause a flinch here and there.

The edits solidly paced, normally I think a film could generally stand to lose 10 minutes at minimum. But this felt just about right to me. Long enough to leave me wanting more, with only the slightest bit of fat on the thing to help provide some much needed breathing space.

The performances are phenomenal with the cast *largely* able to successfully jump between their human and Deadite personas, though a couple of them do end up drifting into ‘zombie/cenobite’ territory which…was a bit of a shame, part of the charm of these films is seeing the deadites purposefully freak people out for their own Amusement…But only ‘Mia’s’ deadite incarnation seems to really do that…

Add in some fabulous scoring, a striking and oppressive orchestral mix that perfectly suits the tone of this film and honestly? Colour me quite impressed!

While I can’t say that ‘Evil Dead (2013)’ is as culturally significant as the original ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy. I feel quite certain that this one had been unfairly judged in the years since its release. I think its a bit of a sleeper classic in all honesty. It’s got a razor sharp script, striking visuals a rock solid cast and a great score. While it may note *quite* measure up to some of the other entries in this series. I almost certainly would recommend it, and I can absolutely see me checking this film out again in the very near future!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evil-dead/

Hot on the heels of ‘The Final Chapter’ (last film my backside) ‘Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning’ Is basically the movie I really kind of wanted after ‘Part 3’. A film that uses the previous entries more as a launching point into just making an end product that does what it’s trying to set out to do. It doesnt *always* succeed in that. But it actually TRIES rather than just resorting to boobs and Crispin Glover.

I always liken this entry to ‘The Dream Warriors’ in the sense that both this film and that one are PAINFULLY 80s in style and tone, and the plots do have a lot of overlapping ground. Only, this one predates ‘Dream Warriors’ by two years…so I guess its a trend setter?

This entry picks up in the modern day of 1985 (a time skip of about 5 years as the first 4 entries more or less happen over a 12 month window from summer ’79 to summer ’80) Tommy Jarvis is now in his late teens and has spent much of the last 5 years in and out of mental health facilities being drugged up to the point of near sedation. At some point along the way he’s also managed to learn martial arts…But im not gonna probe too deep on that one.

The film opens with Tommy being transferred to a open door mental health facility for troubled teens based near Camp Crystal Lake. Just before his arrival, one of the teens under the care of the doctors at the location gets pushed too far by another inmate and hacks them to death.

This sets the rest of the teens on edge and when Tommy arrives and finds out the news, he finds it all rather triggering. A short time after arriving strange things start to happen, people in the surrounding area start to go missing, teens under the care of the doctors head into the woods and never come back. Initially the dissapearences are put down to runaways or are rumoured to be the result of a local hillbilly mother and son team getting pushed one too many times by the locals. But Tommy has the unshakeable feeling that Jason Vorhees has something to do with these dissapearences…But Jasons dead…OR IS HE!?

And i’ve got to say, I always forget just how razors edge this film rides when it comes to the line of being a campy and very over the top horror picture, and just being screechingly irritating. It regularly tips over into full blown annoying terratory for me, but only for seconds at a time, before flinging itself right back into good time campy gouging.

Almost all the issues I’ve had with Parts 1 to 4 here have been more or less resolved. Whereas previously our victims through the film were either very bland ‘all american’ types who spent 50 minutes of the film titting about in the woods before meeting a grizzly end, OR in the case of part 4, they were so inexplicably horny you expected their heads to burst ‘Scanners’ style, in a film so sexually repressed it actually forgot it had to have a point!

Part 5 introduces a wide range of diverse and interesting characters. Because the emphasis is off ‘group looking to get laid’ or ‘group setting up a summer camp’ it means the majority of the plot actually becomes more of a character piece with a bit of a ‘Nightmare on elm street’ twist to the formula. Its refreshing, these characters have complicated backgrounds, complex lives and the film isnt afraid to show mental health issues for what they are…for the most part (I stress).

I guess what im trying to say is that, because the film fundamentally relies on it’s characters, and because they’ve actually BOTHERED to make their characters more than just sacks of meat with a countdown clock stapled to them. It means I as an audience member feel more invested in them as people. I care when they get killed, and furthermore because the film then doesnt have to rely so heavily on Jason setting the tone and atmosphere, it means they can bring back that ‘whodunnit’ aspect of film making that was so present in the first couple of entries. Only this time it’s not a huge waste of time like the first movie, or totally obvious like the 2nd. Theres actually a genuine challenge to figure out why these teens are vanishing and who’s responsible.

Of course, as mentioned a lot of these characters have VERY strong personalities, and as such. Some work, some dont. the hillbilly couple in particular went WAY too far in my opinion in terms of trying to play larger than life figures and came damn close to derailing the whole movie for me. luckily (and mild spoilers here) but they get picked off in the 2nd act meaning I got my fill of them, without well and truely losing the will to live.

The script itself is fun, a little wobbly in places…but fun. While our core cast get a nice layer of definition to work with that carries the main weight of the production. it does seem like the writers did the exact opposite when it came to characters they knew would only be in the film for 10 minutes tops. there are a few in this who seemingly only had the instruction ‘Your loud and get in the way. GO!’ or ‘Your a strong silent type…GO!’ before being trundled out onto the set for a ‘1 take and done’ affair.

The plots solid, with some nice twists and turns I didnt see coming, the act structuring is pretty perfectly balanced and they transition across those acts decently. One issue I did encounter is how this film chooses to spend its time, there are some plot holes (basically whenever Tommy goes AWOL) where it maybe would have been nice to try and tie those off, rather than having them just dissapear into the ether for 20 minutes. At the same time, there are some scenes here that do overrun a little bit, which I feel could have been trunkated quite significantly, if not cut all together.

That being said, im glad its chosen a lane here tonally, and im even happier that they’ve actually bothered to try and bring some animation and life to the story after 4 entries of characters just mooching about till they’re taken out.

The direction gets a nice boost here too, we have a very stylish, neon bathed 80s a thon for this entry, colour gets a real dial up vs the previous entries and its clear that close attention was given to the cast and crew as everyone seems to know where to be and what to do. It does have an heir of being a bit cheaper looking than the previous F13 films. But at the same time, the personality embedded into this films direction and cine is a massive leap over the previous attempts. So it kind of balances out.

The cine is solid too, it’s maybe less Iconic than the previous entries, but those previous entries also had inconsistent work scattered across them. This film knows what it is, knows what it’s trying to be and pretty much delivers on the brief. the sequences are decently cut with plenty of experimentation and breathing room…If anything I feel like, had some of these scenes been truncated or removed entirely, with the film clocking in at around 10-20 minutes shorter (or reassigned that time to some more character development), it’d have probably managed to win out as my favourite F13 film.

The performances are all larger than life (a kid runs someone over with a digger in this thing…instant sign of quality to me) they’re highly animated, not afraid to contrast campy slapstick with more melancholic inducing moments. and as I mentioned earlier, all the characters here pretty much dance the razors edge of being entertaining and engaging and unbearably irritating. where it works, it works brilliantly…where it doesnt? well…its short lived.

Add to that, that FINALLY the scores been updated, we still have some of the classic themes, but we do have some more modern sounding tracks thrown into the mix that compliment the original pieces wonderfully.

All in all? this film, to me? feels like someones FINALLY come into this franchise, blown the dust and cobwebs away, scraped off the mould, given it a lick of paint and dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern slasher era. And I am HERE for that. great fun, seldom dull. it could have maybe done with a bit of tidying up, and the ending does end up getting a *little* bit convoluted. But ultimately, this is one of my favourites of the series.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-a-new-beginning/

Brief and messy, ‘Help Me…Im Possessed’ is a strange title, make NO mistake. But it’s one that I felt had potential…

The plot follows the head doctor of a sanitarium who’s on and off being investigated by the local town sheriff as a series of unexplained murders appear to be happening in the desert surrounding the hospital. the investigations are all largely for show however, as the doctor has more or less confirmed that he KNOWS the murders are happening. He just hasnt outright confessed it to the Sheriff and the Sheriff hasnt got the evidence available to take him in.

It transpires that the doctor is using the Sanitarium as some kind of demonic torture dungeon, keeping the inmates in caged cells, only releasing them to torture and murder them, and running some demonic rituals in the process. Its also revealed that somehow, the doctor has control of some kind of tendril based demon creature that can materialize at will, and the doctors been using it to get rid of his enemies and any unwanted attention.

Its around this time we’re introduced to the doctors sister, a young woman with a childish demeanor who was previously a viciously aggressive woman, until the doctor ran some experiments on her, reducing her to a childish state. At the same time, the doctors love interest flies in to meet up with him as she hasnt seen him in a while, It doesnt take long for her to start hearing rumours about what he gets up to at the hospital. and soon all is revealed to her.

Script wise? this isnt great, while it is mercifully short at 76 minutes long, the story is lumpy, confusing and uneven, the pacing is all over the place the tone is undecided between serious moodiness and campy over the top-ness.

Its not entirely clear what the motives of the characters are, just wanting to summon some demons on the fly isnt really grounds to make a movie about it, the dialogues ultra basic and kind of bland and the ending, while somewhat satisfying, doesnt really make too much sense and ends things kind of abruptly.

The direction is…well, its an attempt! theres some really solid attempts at styalising the scenes, but the knowledge of lighting and composition just, isnt quite there. Sometimes it looks wonderful and atmospheric, but for the most part it looks floodlit, feels washed out and the severe damage of the available print on this one, while in some ways giving it a style all of its own, is for the most part kind of distracting.

There are some fun little sequences here, theres a cop car chase that livens the mood, the kill scenes are manic and flailing, which really suits the nature of the picture honestly. Some of the characters animated reactions help towards the cine and vibe. and the sequences, while a little on the slower side, just about do the job.

The performances arnt particularly great, our core cast are all very dry on delivery and have that stiff 50’s B-movie vibe running throughout, when things start to get more interesting, they do up their game a little. But this is a very one note film acting wise with characters AT MOST getting a touch melodramatic, and more often than not just staying bolted in place throughout there scene.

Honestly? if you’re looking for some deeper cut B-movie goodness, this WILL absolutely scratch that itch. theres some interesting moments dotted throughout and the incoherency of the whole thing does have an endearing quality to it. But, with that being said. This absolutely isnt a *good* movie by any stretch.

When the best thing I can say about it is “At least 15 minutes of this thing is worth your time” and “At least its mercifully short” you KNOW somethings gone wrong somewhere. I didnt hate it, it killed an hour for me. But It’ll probably be a while before I watch this one again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/help-me-im-possessed/