In The Earth | 2021 Halloween Movies

This is the movie that broke me. You don’t need any more of an intro than that.

In The Earth is a thriller released on Hulu back in April 2021. The plot is pretty sparse. There is a deadly virus ravaging the world. Scientist Martin (Joel Fry) and guide Alma (Ellora Torchia) head into the forest to meet up with Martin’s former colleague Olivia (Hayley Squires) to assist with her studies. On their way to her camp, they come across Zach (Reese Shearsmith). Zach kidnaps Martin and Alma in order to force them to help him…contact a sorcerer in the forest? Eventually the pair escapes, only to be subjected to similar pains when they finally find Olivia.

Supposedly, this movie was written and filmed in 15 days. And it shows. There are giant holes in the plot that make no sense. There are these strange flashing images that seem to have nothing to do with the plot either. It feels like writer and director Ben Wheatley wrote a handful of pages and filled the rest in with strobe lights.

I watched this movie almost a week ago. This review was supposed to be written on Monday. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about this pile of crap because I was so upset I watched it in the first place that I didn’t want to address it. But it should be addressed. People should know how terrible this “movie” is. I mean, look at the poster! They couldn’t even put together a good poster. They just cut the eyes out of characters. (Yes, there are multiple posters - one for each character.)

Gah, don’t watch it. It’s terrible. Hulu should just delete the damned thing and we should all forget it even existed.

Hypnotic | 2021 Halloween Movies

I haven’t written a review in a couple of days because I have been extremely disappointed in the spooky movies recently. While a lot of the Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movies are boring, the Halloween fare lately has just been bad. I might try to squeeze in two extra reviews over the next few days in order to make up for the two days I’ve missed but, to be honest, that will depend on the quality of the movies I find. Then again, maybe I’ll give in and write the bad reviews anyway. Until then, here’s one of Netflix’s newest releases.

Hypnotic is about a woman named Jenn (Kate Siegel) who is feeling stuck in life. She doesn’t have a job currently and she suffers from depression after the death of her child and subsequent collapse of her romantic relationship with Brian (Jaime M. Callica). She turns to psychiatrist Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara). Dr. Meade hypnotizes Jenn in order to help her overcome her troubles. But this is only the beginning of her troubles.

As I said before, boring movies are different from bad movies. This one is just boring. Before the movie even reaches the halfway mark, we know what is going to happen. Thriller movies are only thrilling when you don’t know what is going to happen next. The suspense comes from knowing something bad will happen but not knowing what that something is or when it will happen. Hypnotic spells it out for you. Even if it didn’t tell you up front what was going to happen, this plot has been done before. Multiple times.

The sad part of this movie being boring is that it actually has a decent cast. Kate Siegel was amazing in Midnight Mass, Jason O’Mara was in the acclaimed Amazon Prime series The Man In The High Castle, and Dulé Hill’s career is way longer than any of us realize. These are people that could have some stunning things with a better script. It makes me sad that their talents were wasted.

Needless to say, you shouldn’t watch Hypnotic. Go watch literally anything else. You’ll thank me later.

Till Death | 2021 Halloween Movies

Till Death actually came out back in July 2021. But it is more of a thriller than most of the October releases so we’re going to look at it anyway.

Emma (Megan Fox) is unhappily married to Mark (Eoin Macken). She’s been cheating on him with his employee, Tom (Ami Ameen). On their anniversary, Mark takes Emma to a secluded lake house. They have a fairly nice evening but when Emma wakes up the next morning, she finds herself handcuffed to Mark. Mark then shoots himself in the head, leaving Emma handcuffed to his corpse. Besides having to drag around her dead husband’s body, Emma also has to avoid being killed by the men Mark hired to murder her.

When I first heard about Till Death, I wrote it off as one of those terrible movies where the woman gets kidnapped and does stupid things to try to get out of the situation. (I’m looking at you, Secret Obsession.) Boy, was I wrong. Fox’s Emma is smart and powerful. She manages to drag Mark’s stupid body all over the place and, as any good true crime fan will tell you, corpses are heavy. At no point does she give in or just sit and wait for someone to save her. She is always looking for a way to fix her situation.

I honestly don’t want to talk too much about this movie. I really think that everyone should watch it. Especially women. Most of the time women are portrayed as victims or someone who needs to be saved. Emma proves that women are neither. Though maybe we should all learn how to pick a handcuff lock, just in case.

Night Teeth | 2021 Halloween Movies

Netflix has been all over the place this year. We’ve seen good movies, terrible movies, foreign movies, and things that want to be movies but aren’t. But we haven’t had a monster movie, per se. No One Gets Out Alive is the closest we have come. As you can see from the poster, Night Teeth is a vampire movie. Is it a good one though?

In the Los Angeles area, vampires have co-existed peacefully with humans thanks to a centuries old truce that says vampires can only feed on people that consent. Victor (Alfie Allen) is a vampire that has grown bored of the truce. Intending to kill all of the vampires in power, he sends his girlfriend, Zoe (Lucy Fry), and her best friend, Blaire (Debby Ryan), into Los Angeles as a distraction. The girls hire peacekeeper Jay (Raúl Castillo) to drive them for the night but Jay has to save his girlfriend from Victor. Jay’s brother, Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr), takes his place. Benny didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

I’m a little confused about what to say about Night Teeth. As a movie, it was good. But it wasn’t a good vampire movie. A lot of the actiony parts of the movie either took place off-screen or far in the background of the shot. There aren’t even a lot of scenes of drinking blood. Well, there’s scenes of drinking blood from glasses but there’s only one real scene of vampires drinking from a human. It’s almost like the vampire part of the story was an after-thought.

Instead of an action-packed vampire thriller, we are given a romantic drama. I would argue that the main plot of the story is the growing affection between Blaire and Benny. The story really is a little Romeo & Juliet-ish. Coming at it from that direction, it is a decent movie. But if they were going for a romantic movie, there should have been a bit more romance in it. There’s a lot of like half-glances and smirky smiles at each other with only one actual kissing scene. I just think they should have tried harder to show each other that they were interested instead of spending all their time hiding it from Zoe.

It’s a fine movie to watch if you have nothing else to do. Just be warned that it is a vampire movie without any real bite to it. Well, there is a cameo from Megan Fox. I guess that is something…

A Tale Dark & Grimm | 2021 Halloween Movies

I enjoy reading the non-Disneyfied versions of fairy tales. When I saw there was a Grimm brothers-related series coming to Netflix this year, I was pretty darn excited. But did it live up to my own internal hype?

A Tale Dark & Grimm is an animated series based on a book of the same name. Hansel (Andre Robinson) and Gretel (Raini Rodriguez) run away from home only to find themselves involved in a number of other stories. Each story somehow gets worse for them, though this makes them stronger as people. And they will need their combined strength when their kingdom is attacked by a dragon!

The series lasts for 10-episodes, which feels way too few for all of the stories the writers are trying to fit in. Each episode is a separate story, for the most part. The last half of the series ditches the stand-alone story format in favor of tying everything together for the big ending. While I appreciate the writers doing their best to bring all of the characters together, I was really enjoying the stand-alone stories. It was interesting to see Hansel and Gretel take part in other stories unrelated to them.

That said, A Tale Dark & Grimm was a highly enjoyable series. It did keep the dark aspect of each story but it handled the more gory parts of the story in a way that wouldn’t frighten children. Usually in a shadow puppet-type of way. Not that this is intended for small children. It is rated TV-Y7, meaning it’s aimed at children older than 7, which is fair but I would probably go with a 9-10 year range instead. There are a few teasers and trailers on the Netflix website. I would recommend watching those first and deciding if your particular child can handle the content.

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.