Horror - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘The Witch’

“The Witch” is a slow burn of a horror movie, in which something feels off and disturbing almost right away, and the terror builds slowly and the evil permeating the entire film reveals itself gradually. We figure out pretty early on what is happening, but we have no idea the extent of it all until the very end. A story of an early 1600s Puritan family living in the wilderness on the edge of a forest inhabited by something terrible, this is the kind of movie that gets under your skin and creeps you out from within.

William (Ralph Ineson) takes his family and leaves a settlers’ plantation because his religious views were not compatible with the new town’s position on religion, and he takes them out into the wilderness where they find a big open spot next to some ominous looking woods. Soon they have a home and a farm, tended to by William, his teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), his teenage son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), while the mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) takes care of a couple of annoying little twins and their brand new little baby Samuel. One day, Thomasin is out with Samuel watching over him when he gets snatched away from her in less than a second, and his disappearance is sudden and definitive. This baby kidnapping early on sends the family dynamics into an off-kilter direction, with the mom blaming Thomasin and the father wondering if they were simply cursed by a vengeful God unhappy with their sins. Thomasin, for her part, is not sure who to blame, but the family circulated lie that a wolf took the child does not sit well with her because she was there and she knows it wasn’t a wolf. So what could it be? Well, you’ve seen the title of this movie, right?

Review: ‘Krampus’

“Krampus” fills that niche of holiday movies with a twist and does so pretty well, as mixing the tropes of your typical Christmas holiday movie with that of another, seemingly disparate genre (such as horror) can result in the kind of movie that satisfies two kinds of cinematic itches in one fell swoop. Like the raunchy comedy glazed with holiday sweetness that is “The Night Before,” here we have a movie about the real meaning of Christmas, but one that explores the consequences of forgetting that meaning, a mixture of the sincere with the horrific, a Christmas present wrapped in shiny paper and concealing something terrible inside. You know how it is around the holidays.

“Krampus” starts out like a Christmas dark comedy, kind of in the vein of movies like “Bad Santa” or “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” as the opening credits play out over scenes of people fighting each other during one of those Black Friday shopping rushes in which people get trampled and killed every year, showing how people have forgotten that holiday spirit and instead have turned this time of year into an ugly demonstration of excess, greed and an ungodly love for deep discounts on electronics. Then we meet our main characters, a well to do suburban family who have mostly become too busy to appreciate the holiday or more importantly each other, and like “Christmas Vacation,” they are visited by their extended gun-loving, redneck family with whom they do not get along, and all of their interactions together are awkward and do not end well.

Review: ‘Goodnight Mommy’

As opposed to unstoppable monsters or slashers or any sort of undead situation, “Goodnight Mommy” derives its terror and tension from horrific situations which could plausibly happen. People don’t have to be possessed by demons or chased by aliens or hunted by psychopaths, they can just have problems which manifest themselves in a way that is, to say the least, not healthy for everyone involved. Thick with an atmosphere of dread and some good old fashioned Fear and Loathing, this is a movie that unnerves well before it gets to anything really shocking, but then it does a little bit of that shocking, too. Well, dependent on your exposure to these types of movies, anyway.

The movie starts with Lukas and Elias, twin boys, alone, playing in fields and woods by their isolated home. When their mother comes home, her whole face is bandaged, with only her bloodshot eyes and mouth exposed, and the twins are immediately off put by her appearance. She explains that they need to keep the house dark and quiet as she recuperates, she acts very sternly when enforcing the rules, and she only refers to one of the two boys, all of which upsets them and makes them question whether or not this woman is actually their mother. Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Crimson Peak’

From the director of such modern horror classics as the vampire film “Cronos” and the ghost story “The Devil’s Backbone” and the wickedly dark adult fairy tale “Pan’s Labrynth,” each one creepier and spookier and more violent than the last, comes a…costume drama of manners and high society? Well, in a way, yes absolutely, this is the case, but of course Guillermo Del Toro isn’t just making a turn of the century love story in the style of “Wuthering Heights” and “Pride and Prejudice,” he takes this classic genre of storytelling and infuses it with what he knows and does best, and that is telling the tale of monsters, whether they be vampires or ghosts or the scariest type of monster of them all, humans. This movie is about a woman having to choose between two suitors but also having to survive a bad situation which she doesn’t realize is bad until it is too late.

This is “Crimson Peak.”

Review: ‘The Visit’

From the writer/director of “The Village” and the producer of “Paranormal Activity” should tell you everything you need to know about M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit.” Sort of a “found footage” horror movie (elaboration on that qualification to come), here we have Mr. Shyamalan’s foray into this particular brand of low budget horror film making, working in a genre that has inherent low expectations both critically and commercially. Once known as the guy who might be “the next Spielberg,” now we’d just like to see if he can make something better than “The Gallows” or “As Above, So Below.”

In “The Visit,” teenager Becca (Oliva DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are sent to spend a week with their grandparents at their remote farmhouse, and this particular visit is a little weird for them because they never met their grandparents before, as their mother (Kathryn Hahn) hasn’t spoken to them since before she had the kids. Meanwhile, Becca wants to be a filmmaker, so she brings two cameras and her lap top and makes a documentary out of the whole thing. And after they arrive at the farmhouse, they soon realize that not everything is at it seems with their Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), and for a week they are stuck documenting and trying to figure out if everything is okay or not.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’

“A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” is the kind of movie that comes around every now and then and reminds us that original movies can still be made within the confines of well-worn genres. Vampire movies have been made for about 100 years now, so what can be done with the genre now that has not been done already? Well, how about an Iranian vampire movie shot in black and white, with a feminist slant and a dope “sad synth pop” soundtrack, and influenced in equal parts by 1960’s Italian-made westerns and 1980’s American indies? Because that is what we have here, and it is pretty damn cool.

This story takes place in Bad City, a desolate, dusty and depressed Iranian town which seems to be populated by maybe a dozen or so people, almost all of whom are either dirt bags or criminals in one way, shape or form. There is the local pimp (who doubles as a drug dealer), the town’s seemingly only prostitute, a vapid rich girl only interested in partying, a junkie widower, and the junkie’s son, who seems to be a normal, straight laced dude for the most part until he comes across a stash of drugs that he decides to sell for himself to make some money on the side. This last fella is Arash (Arash Mirandi) and despite selling some pills, he comes across as the most honest person in town.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘It Follows’

A film that focuses on atmosphere and sustaining a sense of pure dread, “It Follows” is the most interesting and well made horror movie since 2012’s “Cabin in the Woods.” Imagine knowing that you are always being stalked by an unknown, unnamed thing, something horrible that brings only doom with it, and you keep running but it always catches up eventually, always there, ready to get you, and no matter how long you prolong it, you know that it will get you eventually. That is “It Follows.”

Jay (Maika Monroe, “The Guest“) meets Hugh (Jake Weary) and after a few dates, they have sex. This kind of thing happens. But what happens immediately after this? Not so common. Very shortly after the sex, Hugh informs Jay that there is some sort of thing out there, a supernatural entity that can take the shape of any person, and it will start coming after Jay, slowly yet steadily walking towards her at all times. She can even get in her car and drive far away from it, but it will eventually show up again, stalking her wherever she goes and if it ever catches her, it will kill her in some absolutely horrific way. This happened as a direct result of her sexual encounter with Hugh, who “passed it on” to her, and he instructs her to sleep with someone else to pass it on, hoping that this thing keeps going right down the line.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘What We Do In The Shadows’

From Kiwi comedians (as well as writers, directors, performers, etc.) Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, “What We Do In The Shadows” is a mockumentary in the same vein as the great Christopher Guest films “Best in Show” and “For Your Consideration,” films that follow around a very specific group of people and explores their weirdness, especially in comparison to the rest of “normal” society. But instead of dog owners or bad actors, this is a movie about centuries-old vampires, who also happen to be flatmates.

“What We Do In The Shadows” centers on Viago, Vladislav (the Poker), Deacon and Petyr, who all share a flat together in Wellington, New Zealand. Most of the movie is them hanging out and building up to the masquerade ball held every year for undead folks like them, zombies and witches (though are witches really undead? Anyway…), but before we get there, it really is more like a slice of life kind of thing, what do these guys do with their time, what are they thinking, how they do coexist, and so on. So we get scenes like the one in which three of the flatmates sit together to go over the rules of the flat again, as one of them has been neglecting their chores, and obviously the humor of this kind of scene comes from the fact that they are having a very basic, standard argument among people who live together, just with the exception that they are vampires, so an argument could devolve into them flying in the air and hissing at each other.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Babadook’

“The Babadook” is the kind of horror film in which a family is tormented by some sort of supernatural being, like a haunting kind of deal, but with the added benefit of the horror being directly tied into the emotional needs of the main characters and their relationship to each other. So there is some scary stuff about monsters in the shadows, but then there are also the monsters inside of us as well, ooooooooo, get it? The real monsters?

Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single working mom, and she is single because her husband died in a car accident on their way to the hospital, which they were heading to so she could give birth to her son Sam. And as they approach Sam’s seventh birthday, Amelia is reminded again of her dead husband. What a bummer. Meanwhile, Sam has been acting out more and more, scared of possible monsters under his bed and in his closet, and feeling more and more isolated from his schoolmates, and his tantrums and seemingly paranoid fixations are just weighing down on Amelia more and more. Her personal life, what little of it she has, is a wreck, her son is off his rocker, and she struggles to even get some decent sleep. And just as all of this is going down, a mysterious book enters their lives.

Having a nightly habit of reading a book to her son before he goes to bed, one night he pulls a red book off the shelf called “Mister Babadook” and it is a short pop-up book about a ghostly creature thing trying to come into a home to be all scary and stuff and how you can’t get rid of him, and the art and the wording freaks out Amelia as well as Sam, who then starts believing that the Babadook is in their house trying to get them. Well, really trying to get Amelia, which makes Sam scared because he wants to protect her. And Amelia doesn’t believe him at first, but then weird things start happening around her, and before long, shit really starts to go crazy for her.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Guest’

“The Guest” takes a lot of elements of my favorite movies and some of my favorite genre elements and cliches and tropes and puts it all together in a slick, sexy, cool package, so I guess this is a bit of a disclaimer up top just to say that this movie kind of hits me in my cinematic sweet spot. Basically if I was making a movie like this, I would make it in the same style, if not go even harder with it, and I loved just about every choice made in every aspect of this low budget yet totally off the wall flick.

First off, the trailer for this movie is crap, and thank the movie heavens that I didn’t see the trailer or see out to watch it before I saw this movie. I advise you to do the same and try to avoid it. Now of course I DID put it at the end of this review, cause SOME of you will still want to see the trailer first, but trust me on this one, just see the movie. As for my review here, I am going to give out as few plot deets as possible while still trying to explain why I enjoyed this movie so much.Continue Reading …