Lamb | 2021 Halloween Movies

What the hell did I just watch….

Lamb is an Icelandic supernatural…horror movie? Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are sheep farmers in the middle of nowhere. One of their pregnant sheep gives birth to something extraordinary and the couple decide to raise it as their own child. Ingvar’s brother, Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), moves in with them but is disturbed by their sheep-child, Ada. At first, Pétur tries to kill Ada. Instead, he somehow finds himself beginning to care for the child. It isn’t until Pétur attempts to blackmail Maria into having sex with him that Maria kicks him out of the house. While she is taking Pétur to the bus, Ingvar and Ada take a walk into the countryside to fix their broken tractor. On the way, they meet Ada’s true father, which devastates the entire family.

I fully understand that foreign films are very different from American films. I have talked about that a couple of times already this year. Lamb is something completely and totally different from everything else I have seen. We aren’t given any explanations for anything. All we get are vague references that we have to extract information from . Even at the very end when we are supposedly learning Ada’s parentage, we see him but that is it. There’s no explanation about what he is or where he came from. He’s just…there.

The one good thing I can say about the movie are the graphics were pretty good. The Ada character is disturbing in a way that she is supposed to be. I’m still not completely sure how they pulled it off. Was it all CGI? Was it a hybrid of CGI and practical effects? Did the use black magic?

Unless you are really into arthouse foreign films, I would recommend you skip this one. There isn’t a lot of drama or action. It is VERY slow. And there is no real payoff. This very well may be on the bottom of my Halloween list this year.

Scaredy Cats | 2021 Halloween Movies

Did someone call 2021 “The Year of Family Friendly Movies” or am I just very out of touch with the usual Halloween movie releases? I thought I would be watching a lot of slasher horror movies. Instead I’m watching movies about 12-year olds and magic. I’m not complaining. This is just not what I expected.

Scaredy Cats is the story of Willa Ward (Sophia Reid-Gantzert). On her 12th birthday, her father (Michael Teigen) gives her a cat-shaped necklace that belonged to her mother (Lauren McGibbon) who is no longer with them. Soon, Willa finds out that the necklace is magic and her mother was a witch. Now that the magic has been activated, two bad witches, Sneak (April Telek) and Wanda (Carolyn Taylor), are trying to steal it from the young witch. Willa gathers her two best friends, Scout (Ava Augustin) and Lucy (Daphne Hoskins), to help her defeat the evil witches and save their town.

Again, we have a series instead of a stand-alone movie. This one is aimed at rather young children. It’s created by the same people that did the Air Bud movies. (And all of the other movies - Snow Buddies, Santa Buddies, MVP, etc.) The reason this series is titled Scaredy Cats is because the three girls turn into cats. Frequently. At least once each episode. But at least it is cute.

When I read the synopsis, I thought this was going to be so dumbed down that it annoyed me. Instead, the series is actually good. Well, the CGI is bad but I didn’t expect cinema-level graphics. The story is quite interesting - a witch who leaves her daughter a gift to help her protect the town. They even make fun of the fact that Willa is 12. Her mother’s instructions were to give Willa the necklace when she “comes of age.” Apparently, her dad thought that meant 12. Everyone else thought it would be 18.

This is definitely a Halloween movie for elementary school aged kids. There isn’t anything particularly scary about it, despite the fact that Netflix has “fear” listed on the G-rating warning. So, if your kids are looking for a Halloween series to watch this season, this is it. The episodes are, on average, a half hour long...except for episode one, which is about 45 minutes. Just long enough to keep the little ones entertained before their attention span runs away.

The Medium | 2021 Halloween Movies

Shudder hasn’t had a lot of new releases this year. The first one was V/H/S/94. This time, they have given us the Thai film The Medium. Let’s see if Shudder handles foreign films better than Netflix.

Nim (Sawanee Utoomma) is a shaman in the Isan region of Thailand. When she attends her brother-in-law’s funeral, she finds her niece, Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech), acting strangely. Even though Mink’s mother/Nim’s sister, Noi (Sirani Yankittikan), doesn’t want anything to do with shamans, she needs Nim’s help to cure Mink. Is it really the goddess Ba Yan calling Mink to the shaman life or is it something more sinister?

When I make lists of movies I’m going to review, I try to do as little reading on the movie itself as possible. I look up when it is coming out and where I can watch it. So when The Medium started and it looked a lot like an actual documentary, I thought I messed up. (Not that I am averse to documentaries, I watch a lot of them. It’s just not the Halloween vibe I’m going for with these reviews.) But, no, this isn’t a documentary. It is a really, really good documentary-style. Totally had me fooled.

Thanks to the pseudo-documentary style, I was completely pulled into the movie at the beginning. I cared a lot about Nim and I thought the movie was going to center around her. It doesn’t. Not at all. Nim is, at best, a third tier character. Don’t get me wrong, Nim is very important and moves a lot of the story along. But The Medium, at it’s core, is about Mink, Noi, and Noi’s relationship to religion. Everything and everyone else is secondary to those themes.

The Medium was such a good movie. I did think the ending was a little weak but I’m going to chalk that up to societal differences. I know that, in very broad and general terms, Asian media prefers to have more open endings where Western media likes to tie all of the plotlines up in a nice little bow. With that said, The Medium is definitely left enough open for a sequel or a Paranormal Activity-type of series of movies. I would love to see another movie that takes place in this universe.

There is no need to ask me if you should watch this. Yes, the answer is yes. Go watch it tonight.

Fever Dream | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix has given us another international psychological thriller. Fever Dream is an adaptation of a 2014 novel by Samanta Schweblin, who also co-wrote the script. The movie is co-written by an Argentinian writer and the Peruvian director; it was filmed in Chile and the world premiere was held in Spain. I have no idea which country wants to lay claim to the movie so we’re just going to classify it as Spanish.

Amanda (Maria Valverde) moves to a small village with her daughter, Nina (Guillermina Sorribes Liotta). Soon after moving in, she meets Carola (Dolores Fonzi) who brings her water as the tap water is undrinkable. Carola tells Amanda about her son, David (Marcelo Michinaux) but notes that Nina should not play with him. Weird health issues begin happening to Amanda that she is unable to explain. A voice keeps telling her to pay attention to the details. It’s the things that go unnoticed that matter the most.

This movie is so difficult to explain. It is basically told entirely as a flashback but not in a way that we know it’s a flashback. As a result, very little is explained outright. There are things in the background that you need to pay attention to in order to grasp the reality of the situation. It doesn’t help that there are some supernatural elements in play as well.

Spoilers - I don’t know how to really talk about the movie without revealing the ending. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading here and go watch the movie. - Spoilers coming!

Throughout the movie, there are a lot of references to water and how the children of the village are all deformed. We find out at the very end that the company Carola works for is spraying pesticides in the fields, which is leeching into the water supply. Not only are the children deformed from it, but Amanda and Nina get very sick from it. (Enter supernatural soul-swapping stuff…I don’t want to talk about that though.)

The entire movie takes place after Amanda has gotten sick and Carola’s son, David, is talking her through her memories. David had gotten deathly ill from the nearby river and a local village (witch) doctor saved him by sending half of his soul away with the poison while another soul would take over his body. That part makes no sense, which is why I’m not going to talk about it. It is unclear exactly when David is talking to Amanda or why it’s him talking her through everything. But when Nina gets sick, that village doctor puts half of her soul into David so now actual David is half-David/half-Nina? I don’t understand it.

Anyway, the movie did move very slowly. I think the rest of the world is way more patient that the United States. I think this would have bored the pants off of more people. However, with the exception of the stupid supernatural soul-swapping aspect, I did like the message of the movie. I think maybe they should have had David outright die and it was his spirit walking Amanda through the events. It also would have given Carola’s motives more nuance.

I want to recommend watching Fever Dream but only if you can handle the pacing. There are a lot of repeated scenes as David tries to get Amanda to understand what she remembers. But I do think the message is very important.

Halloween Kills | 2021 Halloween Movies

Guess who’s back. Back again. Michael’s back. Don’t tell anyone because he will probably murder you and your family and your friends and your little dog too.

Halloween Kills is a direct sequel to the 2018 Halloween movie. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) believe they have finally killed Michael (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle). They are wrong. Michael escape from Laurie’s burning house and goes on another killing spree. This time the townspeople, led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), have gathered together to hunt down Michael and kill him themselves.

While I am familiar with the Halloween franchise, I’ve never actually watched any of the movies. Well, until I watched the 2018 movie the other night in order to prepare to watch this one. But this does mean that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the specifics of the Michael character. It did lead to a little bit of confusion on my part during the last third or so of Halloween Kills.

In comparison to the 2018 movie, this one is bloodier. The killing starts almost immediately and the body count is immense. There are also a few instances where Michael uses weird (to me, anyway) objects for the murder and he moves the bodies afterward. My husband claims Michael has done that in past movies so it is not out of character for him. However, we didn’t see any of that in the previous movie so it is weird to me.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie. Considering it is the middle of a trilogy, it fulfills all of the requirements to bring the story back together, keep it going, and add new dimensions to the plot. It will be interesting to see if they do wrap up everything with next year’s Halloween Ends or if they will continue to make Halloween movies forever.

If you do decide to watch this, and I think you should, you will need to watch the 2018 movie first. This movie begins immediately after that one and you will definitely be lost without knowing those events. However, it is not the best Halloween movie out there this year. It is probably the best slasher movie, if you are into that, but there are better spooky movies that came out if you’d rather spend your time not bathed in gushing blood.

Under Wraps | 2021 Halloween Movies

There is this period of time where I was too old to watch Disney Channel movies and my daughter wasn’t born yet so there were no children in the house either. As a result, there is a chunk of movies from the late-1990s that I am not familiar with. The original version of Under Wraps is one of those movies. Now that I know that the 2021 version is a remake, I feel a little silly getting so excited seeing a new Halloween movie on Disney’s roster.

Marshall (Malachi Barton) is a 12-year old boy obsessed with horror movies and monsters. During a school field trip, he learns about a mummy that was stolen in route to the local museum. The museum has the female mummy but not her true love. Marshall with his best friend, Gilbert (Christian J Simon), and new friend, Amy (Sophia Hammons), find the stolen mummy in the basement of Marshall’s weird neighbor. The mummy, who Marshall names Harold (Phil Wright), comes to life when the moonlight hits his amulet but he only has three days to get back to his true love…and his coffin…before he turns to dust.

I know I’m not the target audience for this movie. Especially since it’s a fairly standard Disney Channel Original Movie (aka DCOM). However, of the DCOM that I am familiar with, this one wasn’t awful. There were some cute throwbacks to other Disney media that I do know. They played the remake of China Anne McClain’s song “Calling All The Monsters” from the A.N.T. Farm series. And I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of the characters from the DCOM Zombies. That definitely made me pay a little more attention to the movie than I normally would have.

While I do think Under Wraps is watchable, I think it really is intended for a younger audience. I bet kids in the 8-13 age range would probably get some enjoyment out of the movie. Or if you really, really like watching DCOMs, I suppose. But there are definitely some better kid-appropriate movies out there this year. Unless you are hooked on watching a Disney movie, I would say skip this and watch Nightbooks instead.

The Chestnut Man | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix is really opening itself up to the international movie world. In addition to the South Korean Squid Game series, the streaming service also gives us the Danish The Chestnut Man series. While they are both Netflix-funded series outside of the US, they couldn’t be more different.

In a Copenhagen suburb, a woman is found brutally murdered. One of the main pieces of evidence the police have to work with is a small figure of a man made of chestnuts hanging from a nearby tree. This chestnut man links the murder with the disappearance of a child a year earlier. How does all of this fit together?

Once again, I watched this series dubbed in English instead of the original Danish language. While I don’t think the dub was particularly good, I don’t know that it changed my opinion of the show.

I think the best part of the series was the acting. Both Danica Curcic as the main detective, Naia Thulin, and her partner, Mark Hess, played by Mikkel Boe Følsgaard were so good. You could feel everything they were going through, both professionally and personally. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but the bad guy was also portrayed very well.

Unfortunately, the bad part of the series, in my opinion, is the pacing. Maybe this is a European thing but the show started so slowly. It took me a couple of days just to get through the first two episodes. Once you get past episode three, though? The case picks up and it’s difficult to stop watching. Since the show is only six episodes long, it kinda sucks that the first 1/3 of it is so slow. Maybe if there were some more dramatic cliffhangers at the end of each episode, I would have been drawn in a bit more in the beginning.

The only other issue I had is actually with Netflix and not the show itself. Netflix put this on their list of Halloween thriller movies for 2021. While the show is listed as a psychological thriller, it wasn’t particularly thrilling. It felt more like a police procedural show like Law & Order or NYPD Blue. I don’t think this should have been marketed as a Halloween release. People tend to expect a lot of Halloween fare.

If you enjoy series from outside the US, you would probably like this. But if you are used to American television, you might end up very bored. I do think it is worth a watch if you can power through the slow times.

Muppets Haunted Mansion | 2021 Halloween Movies

The Muppets have had a long career. Yet they have never released a Halloween special. I suppose the past year and a half has been scary for everyone because here is their very first Halloween special!

Loosely based on the Haunted Mansion ride at the Disney parks, the story begins with Gonzo going to a party in honor of his favorite magician, the Great MacGuffin. Pepe the King Prawn goes along anxious to meet some ladies. When they arrive at the mansion, they are told that the mansion is haunted and no one ever leaves. However, if they can survive one night, they will be able to leave. Otherwise, they will be trapped there forever.

As a fan of the Haunted Mansion ride, it was fun to see all of the parts of the attraction interact with each other. Granted, this isn’t the exact ride. Miss Piggy portrays the fortune teller head in the crystal ball, Will Arnett plays the Host, Taraji P. Henson plays The Bride, etc. But I enjoyed the interpretations of the animatronics. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out where in the ride each character “lived.”

There, honestly, isn’t a whole lot to say about the special. It’s pretty typical Muppets fare, except this time it’s centered around Gonzo instead of Kermit and Piggy. The human actors were good. Darren Criss was very funny as The Caretaker. Will Arnett is always funny. I think the only thing I didn’t like about the show was that the credits went by way too fast for me to see who all was in it. There are some quick scenes - the Singing Busts, for example - that went by too fast for me to identify everyone and then the credits went by too fast as well. But that is what they make the internet for. I can look that up easily.

This is an easy special to recommend. If you like the Muppets or the Haunted Mansion ride, you are likely to love the special. If you are an old fuddy duddy stick in the mud, there are plenty of other things for you to watch. The Muppets are awesome.

Escape The Undertaker | 2021 Halloween Movies

It’s a little disingenuous to call Escape The Undertaker a movie. I mean, it’s not a series - it’s just one 30-minute episode. But since it is only 30 minutes, can it really be classified a movie? It’s also interactive. You get to choose what the characters do. I guess it can be called an interactive short. We’ll go with that.

Three wrestlers - Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods, collectively known as The New Day - enter The Undertaker’s mansion in order to obtain his urn of power. You, the viewer, decide where the men go and what they do. The question is - will they succeed or will you get them killed?

Admittedly, I did not play through all of the options you are given. It would require multiple viewings and I’m just not that interested in wrestling. My husband, who is more familiar with the sport, will probably go through it a couple of times himself. I’m not sure that more viewings would change my opinion anyway.

Despite not being familiar with any of the people starring in this short, I found it quite funny. There were a few times that The New Day had me chuckling. And there were definitely some interesting choices to make. Like “Fight The Undertaker” or “Flee.” Frequently, the trio would break up and you would have to decide who you would go with. That’s why I haven’t played through it more. You figure three guys with a couple of two-choice decisions each. There’s a lot of replayability here.

I can’t make a “should you watch it” decision on this one because it’s not a passive watching experience. Do you want to play a funny game about a bunch of wrestlers? This is for you. Do you want to see if you can make decisions that will get one or all of them killed? This is for you. Do you hate The Undertaker and you want The New Day to take him down? This is for you. Either way, give it at least one run-through. If you hate it, stop playing. But if you love it, you can play it over and over again until you have selected every option possible. And maybe you’ll have a few laughs along the way.

V/H/S/94 | 2021 Halloween Movies

Shudder, the horror movie channel, has entered the Halloween fray with V/H/S/94. This is the fourth installment in the series. I haven’t watched the other three so I’m not sure if I’ll get lost in a storyline or whatnot.

V/H/S/94 is a “found footage” anthology series. There are four separate stories strung together with an overarching story about a SWAT team raiding a warehouse for drugs. The four stories consist of “Storm Drain,” a story about a rat-man living in the sewers of a small town; “The Empty Wake,” where a woman has to host a late night viewing at a funeral home by herself; “The Subject,” which is the story of a mad scientist kidnapping people to turn them into creatures; and “Terror,” a weirdly political vampire tale.

Like any anthology movie, there are good stories and there are not-as-good stories. I didn’t think “Storm Drain” was particularly entertaining. The story didn’t make a lot of sense and the acting was cheesy. Sometimes cheesy is good. But you need a good story to make up for the cheesiness.

“The Empty Wake” was a little bit better but it took a very long time to get to the action. There’s a lot of…well, empty time where the woman (Kyal Legend) is just sitting there. The end was interesting. It just took too long to get there.

My favorite story out of all of them was “The Subject.” We barely see the creatures. Actually, most of the movie is from the female creature’s point of view. So what we see is everyone’s reactions to the creatures. It is pretty terrifying. I think I would like to a full length movie with this premise.

As for “Terror,” I’m not sure how I feel about it. It starts out with domestic terrorism and ends up with vampires. I see what the writer wanted to do with the story, I’m just not sure it worked out well. This is another instance where I think the story needed more time to develop the characters and really bring everything together. I probably would watch a full length movie about this if it was done right. Terrorism can be a tricky subject though.

Finally, that overarching story they called “Holy Hell.” I wanted to like these parts so bad. But the camerawork is terrible. I understand that it’s supposed to be a found footage documentary type thing but the camera swings all over the place, not giving you a chance to really see what is going on. Especially since the warehouse setting isn’t lit very well. At least the good stories trapped inside “Holy Hell” made watching the movie worthwhile.

With all that said, do I think you should watch this… If you are a fan of found footage type movies, you might get a kick out of it. But if you are looking for some actual Halloween thrills, you aren’t likely to find them there. I spent more time thinking “Oh, that is interesting” or “I wonder how they did that effect” instead of being pulled into the stories. I think the people who would enjoy this film the most are the ones that love cheesy C-list horror movies. If you are into Goblin, or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, or maybe even Sharknado, this may be for you.