The Boneyard (1991)

The Boneyard (1991) was quite awful. 🤣 It starts off incredibly slow and takes forever to pick up, and the dialogue (filled with gratuitous confessional-style oversharing) is ridiculous. Notttt quality cinema. Despite all that, the sfx makeup was awesome. Well, in some scenes it was crap, but the zombie children were really freaky and awesome looking!! In many horror movies, the creatures sort of lurk in the shadows, so you are always more afraid of your imagination than of whatever's on the screen. Not so here, the undead kiddos hold up to scrutiny in full view. (Perhaps unsurprising, considering James Cummins started his career in special effects and only later dabbled in directing.) This movie maybe gets some points for pure absurdity, but this is surely one to drunkenly heckle with your mates.

The Lodge (2019)

The Lodge (2019) was extremely dark. Tense and moody psychological thriller. Not my favorite film.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

This film was sad -- what happens when you push an emotionally fragile person too hard, past their breaking point. Not really a horror movie though - just a depressing case of abusing a person who has already been traumatized, and watching as they crack under pressure.

The Innocents (1961)

The Innocents (1961) was fantastic! Beautiful  costumes too, and a gorgeous spooky mansion. Very tense! And intriguing, ambiguous action. Excellent.

"What shall I sing to my lord from my window?

What shall I sing, for my lord will not stay?

What shall I sing, for my lord will not listen?

Where shall I go when my lord is away? 

Whom shall I love when the moon is arisen?

Gone is my lord, and the grave is his prison.

What shall I say when my lord comes a-calling? 

What shall I say when he knocks on my door?

What shall I say when his feet enter softly?

Leaving the marks of his grave on my floor.

Enter my lord!

Come from your prison!

Come from your grave, for the moon is arisen.

Welcome, my lord...”

Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966)

Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966) had some gorgeous shots -- the townsfolk carrying the coffin, silhouetted against the sky, is amazing -- but overall this movie feels a little ludicrous to a modern viewer. Not Bava's best. (And I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, or maybe it's just totally predictable? haha)

The Omen (1976)

 Watched with Terra.

Ju-On The Grudge (2002)

 Ju-On The Grudge was surprisingly scary, despite the silly effects.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Rosemary's Baby is the best horror movie of all time. It is the rare perfect movie. Mia Farrow is captivating. The pacing is brilliant. The aesthetic is compelling. The camerawork is striking. The movie itself is thrilling, and the ending is satisfying. But most of all, the story stays with you, because it taps into deeply felt horrors, which are emotional and cerebral and visceral - no cheap thrills here.

This film perfectly epitomizes (and was seminal in developing) two central horror tropes -- 

1) A person leading a normal life is exposed by chance to the dark, seedy underbelly of the world. Experiencing this new truth radically transforms the hero's view of society and of their place within it. As the hero probes deeper into this new, ugly truth of the world, they are inexorably dragged deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. If they conquer the dark forces and emerge successfully, they are forever altered.

~ This trope is profitably explored in Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), for example.

2) Others refuse to validate the new truth the hero is experiencing, and the hero is forced to choose between denying the truth of their own experiences (and thus accepting that they have gone mad), or believing that everyone around them is out to get them, and is involved in some great conspiracy at the hero's expense. This tension fills the hero (and vicariously, the viewer) with terror and uncanny revulsion, at the loathsome prospects of insanity, or betrayal. The need to resolve this tension is what drives the hero deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. 

~ In this blog, I have used the tag "I know yall think I'm crazy but..." to identify films with this theme.

~ Hitchcock of course inspired the term "gaslighting" with his eponymous 1944 film.