Halloween 2018: TV Binge: The Haunting of Hill House (Season 1, 2018)

We are back with the horror marathon continuation. Some of you know that I am a huge Mike Flanagan fan. I think that he has a lot of skills as a director and delivers some great atmospheric horror. When I saw that The Haunting of Hill House is created by Mike Flanagan, it went to the top of the pile right away. And here we are…

The Haunting of Hill House (Season 1, 2018)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Michael Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel, Carla Gugino, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Victoria Pedretti

Flashing between past and present, a fractured family confronts haunting memories of their old home and the terrifying events that drove them from it. – IMDB

The Haunting of Hill House is adapted from a book which I haven’t read before so no comparison from me on how closely or loosely adapted it is. However, as many great reviews as there are out there, there were some pacing issues here. Some scenes were drawn out but I won’t get into which to keep this spoiler free. If you disagree, you can send me an email and I will tell you which and you can tell me why I am wrong. One of my biggest comments about almost all Netflix series is pacing, it always has his first half slow development and halfway point has this turning climactic point that changes the game then the second half of the series is mindblowingly awesome. Same applies here. Pacing doesn’t equate execution completely because in terms of creepy and atmosphere, this one delivers them in great beautiful haunting degrees and while there are some jump scares, they have this lingering effect. I say this because I had one scene that startled me and I had a delay in reaction from screaming really loud because I was terrified.

As much as I think the pacing for the first half doesn’t match the second half, I can’t exactly dismiss it either because it gave us a one on one time with each of the Crain kids and their views on Hill House but more importantly, their personality and relationship with each other. It told us a story from each of their lives and we can see the impact that their childhood at Hill House had on them as we alternated masterfully between the flashbacks to the present. Its this part that subconsciously gives the connection to the characters. Of course, some of the stories are stronger than the other ones but thinking back, it fits together with the end game. Talking about character, Hill House is a character by itself. The layout and the decor to its past and its previous inhabitants. There is a lot of mystery behind it.

As much as I felt that I am not as excited about The Haunting of Hill House as everyone else seems to be, Mike Flanagan does deliver on the atmosphere and giving legit jumpscares that were effective and fitting. This series is in its details. The ghosts are probably more than you can see unless you observe really carefully. However, the feeling that something is lurking or something doesn’t feel right or how the ghosts appear are all done really well.

Horror Marathon: Gerald’s Game (2017)

Let’s take a break from straight up horror and go for something a little more psychological. Gerald’s Game was recently released as a Netflix Originals and is directed by Mike Flanagan who I overall love quite a bit. His latest movies have been good and not great, however, I always wonder how you can rival a great debut like Absentia. However, I do think he has a great vision on building horror and always remain hopeful when it comes to creating the tense atmosphere. With some expectation and little knowledge of what Gerald’s Game is about, I went to check it out!

Gerald’s Game (2017)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Henry Thomas, Chiara Aurelia, Carel Struycken, Kate Siegel

While trying to spice up their marriage in their remote lake house, Jessie must fight to survive when her husband dies unexpectedly, leaving her handcuffed to their bed frame.-IMDB

Stephen King’s novels have been adapted since forever. This year, it seems to be all over the place with IT recently released in theatres and then there’s been TV shows as well. Now, we land on Gerald’s Game. For those new here, I’m a reader but sadly, I’ve been incredibly behind on reading Stephen King novels. I’ve only read two novellas, A Good Marriage and 1922 and a novel, Carrie. I’m currently reading IT and that’s proving to be an endless task. However, I have watched a lot of adaptations of his. I can say that he has great art in creating incredible characters and developments and such and even the mystery, thriller, suspense, horror atmosphere balance. However, be it The Mist or IT, I can’t quite buy into their endings. Suffice to say that I didn’t know anything about Gerald’s Game before jumping into this one. When the movie started and even into the 2nd part of it, I was a fan. It was captivating and thrilling to watching our main character try to figure out a way to survive and have her inner monologue and even hallucinating a second version of herself (like her conscience or something) and her dead husband. However, the story does start to become slightly flat as we near the ending.

Gerald’s Game is a great psychological thriller. There are some gruesome imagery here but overall, its a gripping experience as this wife, Jessie struggles to get herself out of these chains before she dehydrates and dies as no one is expected to be in the neighborhood for the next few days. In many ways, it is very much a thriller with perhaps some horror elements which I found were possibly the weaker parts of the film. The tension built in the conversations and the ideas she got to sustain herself was incredibly engaging to watch. Mike Flanagan is great at creating atmosphere in his films and he yet again achieves it here. The movie is almost completely lead by Carla Gugino and while I can’t quite pinpoint where I’ve seen her act before (although I’m aware of who she is), she does an outstanding job. She takes on the role of Jessie is such a mesmerizing way that its hard to not want her to escape and be scared or nervous together with her as she tries to do one thing or the next. However predictable some of the outcomes are, her role keeps us intrigued to keep watching. Opposite her is Bruce Greenwood who plays her husband. He isn’t physically alive for very long however, the little hints we get dive into further conversations that she envisions as his ghost somewhat hangs around with her. In some ways, her ghost and his ghost play this angel and demon role and its quite entertaining to watch also.

While I can appreciate the fact that the story takes on a tangent of Jessie’s past with her father and it somewhat justifies why she chose her current husband, it drives her to the past where she remembers her time with her father and the things he did. I’ll probably be mentioning something a little more fleshed out on portraying fathers in Stephen King’s stories when I get to the IT reviews. Here Jessie’s father is played by Henry Thomas. Its odd how her family was because it seems that the mother suspects something and yet not really. However the jest of it is the trauma that she’s somehow pushed away about her father. That was a pretty disturbing scene. Somehow, this is where the story seems to derail a little. The best parts of Gerald’s Game is when she has those conversations and in the single setting and not when she hallucinates or sees some weird things or goes into her memories. Something about it seems to be executed not quite as effectively, losing the great tension it had built from the beginning.

Overall, Gerald’s Game is a pretty decent movie. I’m talking about this completely as the movie itself and not as an adaptation since I’ve never read the book. If you have read the book and have seen this, does the movie do the book justice? Carla Gugino alone is worth the watch here. She truly commands this role perfectly. Its an engaging and intriguing watch however, it does lose its footing in the last third or maybe even at somewhere near the halfway point. And then the ending, well… I’m not exactly a fan. But then, I’ve had issues with Stephen King endings before. However, Stephen King builds great, deep and twisted characters that not a lot of other authors have ever been able to do and Gerald’s Game shows that off a whole lot.

San Andreas (2015)

The first in a bunch of 2015 movies is going to be a disaster film.  If you missed the weekly adventures and updates, I got a good few 2015 movies for Boxing Day at some sweet deals. Instead of leaving them to sit on my shelf and forget about them until a few months later, I decided that I’m going to try and watch a few more 2015 a little earlier than a week before the Academy Awards.  As you can see, I chose to start with San Andreas so that is definitely not an Oscar choice, not by a long shot.  However, point is that I’m going to aim to get some 2015 titles watched, more than my little 25 movies or so that I’ve seen so far.

Enough of the rambling, let’s check out San Andreas! 🙂

San Andreas (2015)

Director: Brad Peyton

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Hugo Johnston-Burt, Art Parkinson, Paul Giamatti, Archie Panjabi, Ioan Gruffudd

In the aftermath of a massive earthquake in California, a rescue-chopper pilot makes a dangerous journey with his ex-wife across the state in order to rescue his daughter.-IMDB

Disaster films (based on natural disasters) always work their hardest to make sure their audience needs to suspend their belief as much as possible.  Thing is, its got itself stuck in a category that almost guarantees to be bad movie-making with just a lot of crumbling buildings, floods, and other natural disasters when Mother Nature decides to tell the world (or the city) to go to hell. We’ve seen it in 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow for somewhat more popular choices. Despite saying that, you all know that I’m one to be able to suspend my belief quite a bit and plus, I change how I talk about a movie based on my expectations of it. San Andreas is a fun film.  Its predictable and has those normal natural disaster film tropes but you know what those other movies don’t have? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. This man can make (almost) any film work with his expressions, one-liners and just his towering build.  There are a thousand things that don’t make sense in San Andreas, like him leaving his post to save his almost ex-wife and daughter but for all those things, there’s also a decent cast and story that kind of works. My best comparison would be like watching Uncharted as a movie because the moment you feel safe, impending danger happens almost immediately after. That is what disaster films need to be.

 A huge pro in San Andreas was that the cast we have here and the decisions they make, not just our main hero, Ray (played by Dwayne Johnson) made good decisions.  We had little heroes in the younger cast who saves each other and really toughs it out.  The youngest kid, Ollie makes some good calls.  Sure, romances and family drama shouldn’t be in the forefront of disaster movies but sometimes, in moderation, I can accept its existence.  Some of those moments were to let us understand Ray a little better so that we’d connect with his character also and his relationship with his ex-wife, who had just gotten engaged to this rich real estate guy responsible for the sturdiest skyscraper. We follow four groups throughout the movie from the experts, played by Paul Giamatti and his team at Caltech, Ray and his ex-wife finding their daughter, their daughter and the two brothers that escaped the building and ex-wife’s fiance Daniel. This movie is almost two hours long so it can sustain those story lines rather well (in comparison to other disaster film plots).

I’m not an expert in earthquakes and tectonic plates, even US geography and where the fault lines are and all that stuff, so I’m not going to talk about how sound the expert (played by Paul Giamatti) and his research worked here.  Like I said, there is a bit of suspending belief so I’m not sure I have to understand in depth but I got the idea so you knew that imminent dangers was hitting across that area. However, I do have to give it to San Andreas that its special effects were quite spot-on.  Sometimes, there are some cheesy or bad effects but this one made it rather believable.  If there’s any truth to this, if anything like this happens, Caltech is the place you want to be 😉

Overall, San Andreas is a pretty decent disaster movie.  A good part of that goes out to the great cast.  I personally love Dwayne Johnson and Paul Giamatti a lot so they already had extra points before the movie started.  It satisfied that disaster movie craving and actually exceeded what I expected to be much more fun with some good effects and smart characters that I was able to enjoy it even more.

Have you seen San Andreas? What are your thoughts? Do you enjoy watching disaster films?

Double Review: Project X (2012) & Women in Trouble (2009)

I have a TON of movies that I watched and haven’t reviewed but these two recent ones due to Netflix expiration brought me to these and I figured I might as well have a say on these. I was pretty much on cold meds and pretty out of it when I’m at home.  I truly hate summer colds and ALL I ask is decent entertainment but lets just get this out right now that I truly did not enjoy these two.

Lets start this possibly rant-like write-up, shall we?

Project X (2012)

Director: Nima Nourizadeh

Cast: Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown, Dax Flame, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Alexis Knapp, Miles Teller, Peter MacKenzie

Its Thomas Kub’s (Thomas Mann) birthday and with the influence of his friends, Costa (Oliver Cooper) and JB (Jonathan Daniel Brown), they decide to take advantage of Thomas’s parents being away for the weekend to throw a huge party for their senior class to help them get popular.  Except things don’t quite go as they plan when more people than they expected arrive and its gets completely out of hand.

Seriously, thats all I even want to say about this movie.  Thats all it really deserves.  Why did it suck? They tried to use found footage and it was so ridiculous.  I haven’t been in high school in like 11 years or something and I wasn’t in the popular crowd either (nor did I want to be) so maybe thats why I can’t appreciate this notion of getting popular through doing all these stupid things. Point is, the movie encourages all the wrong things.

So, SPOILER ALERT starts about now (if you plan on seeing this): the dad didn’t even give a crap about it.  He just couldn’t believe that his son was capable of this because he was a loser.  Sure, he still grounded him for trashing his car but not the fact that the whole f’ing house was destroyed? That is THE WORST parent talk ever. *Spoiler END*

What the message that I’m getting is that:  Its okay to break the rules, trash the house, throw a gigiantic party and do a ton of stupid stuff and get held on charges as long as you come back to school and get the girl and all the popularity (that will probably fade after you graduate).  Is it really worth it?

Man, I’m starting to think I am old.

For the record, the only reason, at any age for me to even THINK about standing on my roof (forget jumping off it) is if there is a fire or I’m checking the shingles are good.

Anyways, suffice to say that I don’t think kids these days need this sort of movie as encouragement to party hard.  They can do it all on their own and to say that its okay for short-lived popularity, thats even worse.

Women in Trouble (2009)

Director: Sebastian Gutierrez

Cast: Carla Gugino, Adrianne Palicki, Connie Britton, Caitlin Keats, Isabella Gutierrez, Simon Baker, Sarah Clarke, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Josh Brolin

A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble.- IMDB

To say I hated this movie is going a bit far. I just thought it was really boring.  I mean, I don’t find movies boring.  I rarely do.  I always manage to find that one thing that makes it good.  I sat through this in hopes that something would happen that made it good.  You know, the satisfying ending or something like that.  Before I knew it, there was only 15 minutes left in the movie and all I saw was 10 half-done stories of women that weren’t even actually 10 stories because some just vanished into thin air with nothing.  This is supposed to be a comedy and I rarely laughed, except for the final bit where Joseph Gordon-Levitt was on.  Even Simon Baker was not good enough to make me like this (mostly because his character wasn’t extremely likable).

There really is nothing much to say about this because nothing actually happens.  I’m leaving with that right there.

Oh right, and I believe there is a sequel for this following Carla Gugino’s character, a porn actress who gets pregnant and the development of the other women in the movie.  Its on Netflix also and I’m thinking since they used this entire movie to do nothing and just set the stage, maybe the next one might get somewhere? I don’t know anymore.  I put it on my list but maybe I’ll never get around to seeing it. The only reason I’d watch the continuation is to see if this second one gives some closure and substance to these characters.

Either way, I don’t recommend Project X unless you like that sort of party movie.  I apparently have no interest in it whatsoever, not when I was a teen, not in university and definitely not now. As for Women in Trouble, it could’ve been more but it didn’t do anything with it and just turned out to be a waste of time because there was no development of any sort.

Now that we have the bad part done…I have some pretty awesome movies to talk about for the next few reviews over the next few days! 🙂

Excited? I know I am! For one, I’m pretty sure I just fell completely in love with an actor.  I knew he was good but man, this guy is just wow right now.  If you want to know who it is, drop by again 😉

The Lookout (2007)

Back in December, Target bought out Zellers and as our neighborhood Zellers was cleaning out all of its stock, I went hunting for extra cheap DVDs.  In the piles and piles, I found this one.  I like Matthew Goode and JGL, so why not?

Director: Scott Frank

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Jeff Daniels, Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino, Sergio Di Zio

When a tragic accident causes Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to lose every thing he had in his promising future, he has to rebuild it step by step and adapt to being handicapped with his memory.  He no longer can sequence his thoughts properly and control his emotions due to damage to his frontal lobes.  Due to this, he ends up paired up with a blind man called Lewis (Jeff Daniels) as a means to take care of each other.  After a night shift at his job, he meets Gary Spargo, a guy who claims he used to date his sister and praise the success he had in school back in the day before the accident.  Gary introduces him to his friends and helps him meet an ex-dancer called Luvlee (Isla Fisher).  Eventually, he learns that Gary approached him to manipulate him to join them in their bank heist and be their lookout and teaches him that “Whoever has the money has the power”.

Even after a few days of seeing this, I’m having slightly mixed feelings about this.  Don’t get me wrong.  Its a decent flick.  In fact, for a good part of this drama/crime thriller, I felt that it was alright.  Especially since we had to understand what our main character Chris was going through and to understand how his life was run.  However, once the whole heist thing goes down, I felt it was a bit more predictable.  I had a feeling of what was going to go down and I even figured out some of their lines.

 

There is one specific element that I’d like to really emphasize on because the movie would’ve been pretty horrible without it was the cast and their characters.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a really good Chris, a guy who has to calm his emotions and deal with the mess he’s made when his brain isn’t really cooperating with him.  Even before all the great breakthrough roles he had, this one shows us how promising he is.  It helps that everyone else, or at least the other  roles were outstanding as well.  I’ve always liked Jeff Daniels.  Remembering him in Speed makes me love him even more.  Now, as Lewis, he plays a tough, sometimes vulgar, sarcastic, but pretty easy going blind guy.  He’s extremely chill with everything that Chris does, but uses all his other senses to look out for him.

 

Matthew Goode pretty much plays the bad guy here. He’s the leader of the heist and he wants the money to have more power.  He’s secretive and the moment his Gary Spargo ends up on screen, we start wondering.  He’s a suspenseful character, mostly because we’re not completely sure if he’s manipulating Chris or whether he’s really out to help him sincerely and be his friend.  Thats the guessing game and the surprises of the movie and he is the main thrill.  Of course, except for his other henchman, Bone who really looks creepy and doesn’t talk.  That guy had me thinking about what he was there to do every time he popped up.

 

Isla Fisher plays the lovely Luvlee, an ex-dancer (we never see her dance so we’ll just accept that its the truth) who ends up having a “relationship” with Chris.  This wasn’t a big role but its Isla Fisher and I love her charisma on screen.  I’ve enjoyed most of the movies with her in it.  Most of who Luvlee is isn’t really apparent as we don’t really learn much about her throughout the movie.  This also gives her character a little bit of mystery.

This movie is a decent thriller mostly for its characters.  The story is slow-paced but for a good part of the first half, it really has us guessing and trying to figure out everyone’s positions as the characters slowly one by one enter the screen.  It does drop off a bit at the end however, its worth the watch just to see Matthew Goode in a bad guy role or JGL’s awesomeness.

Race to Witch Mountain (2009)

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is quickly becoming a very entertaining actor in my book.  I’ve enjoyed most of his movies that I’ve seen.  Of course, as for some actors, I tend to skip out on the ones I know I will probably not enjoy.  Today (May 2nd) is his birthday according to IMDB and he is now 41 years old. Seeing that I do like him quite a bit for his wit and fun, I decided to choose a movie to watch from what I have and it landed on this flick…one that I fell asleep watching the first time but I believe it was due to fatigue and not boredom.  Lets see which it was 😉

Director: Andy Fickman

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Carla Gugino, Ciaran Hinds

Zooming into ex-con ex-wheelman taxi driver, Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) we see his choice to lead a normal life in The Stripe of Las Vegas.  While he is trying to cut off all ties from the criminal he used to work for, his life takes an even more dangerous turn when two kids, Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and her brother Seth (Alexander Ludwig) appear in the back of his cab asking for a lift to the middle of nowhere with a lot of cash to pay the fare.  Strange things start happening as mysterious SUVs start attacking his car and on pursuit to their whereabouts. When they reach their destination, Sara and Seth realize that someone has arrived before them and sabotaged the area. This turns out to be another form of military alien who seems absolutely indestructable.  Jack learns that both Sara and Seth are also aliens and they are there to pick up something that will save their planet as well and they need to get back their spaceship from the Department of Defense.  The Department of Defense seems to be very crooked and they are hot on the groups tail throughout the movie (yes, the SUVs were them) and they are lead by Burke (Ciaran Hinds).  With the help of Dr. Alex Friedman, a UFO specialist, they make their run to a hidden base called Witch Mountain to get Sara and Seth back home.

First of all, this is a remake of a previous Disney  movie.  I’ve never seen the first one so I have nothing to compare it to.  I got this movie mostly because Disney usually makes acceptable family adventure flicks and it has The Rock.  Plus, I had just seen Bridge of Terabithia which had AnnaSophia Robb and I loved that one a lot too.  I need to review it eventually.

Alien invasions movie has always seemed to be a difficult genre to master.  I’ve never watched one that I’ve truly enjoyed.  This one may not completely be an exception.  I fell asleep the first time around and this second time, I started it up at the beginning of a workout and eventually rewinded it to see the beginning again.  When I finally did sit down to watch the movie seriously, it wasn’t a complete downer.  The premise of the movie is decent.  The Rock delivers some good dialogue that gives us some good laughs.  He’s always fun to watch on screen especially when he is driving away in panic and then having attitude here and there.  Its what makes it so fun.

Let me just start by saying that I didn’t hate the movie.  But, at not really any point did I find that I was completely attached to the movie. I paused various times to do this and that.  There are parts that are predictable and the characters didn’t really make me love them all that well.  Was it their acting had problems? I’m not even sure.  I had fun here and there. Car chases and shooting and fighting gave this movie adventure and action.  You know what it felt like at some point in time? It felt completely like an  Alien 101 course.

Almost forgot to mention! Remember back in The Woman in Black, I found an actor that I really liked? Ciaran Hinds is in this as Department of Defense head and he is pretty cool.  Pretty bad ass most of the time (well, as bad ass as Disney would allow) and he made me somewhat cringe a bit.  He made the events get a bit more intense.

It sounds like I’m complaining but overall this is an average movie.  I’m not sure I’ll pull it out to watch every year but its not bad enough that I want to throw it away either.  Everyone brings in a decent effort and the story is pretty good.  Its a nice watch when you want some downtime.  I’d love to check out the original eventually though.

Have you seen the original Race to Witch Mountain? Do you like The Rock? Are there any particular performances of his that you enjoyed?