Horror Film Review #8

Curse of Downers Grove

This hardly classifies as a definitive horror movie, its more of an intriguing mystery, wrapped in teen angst and surrounded by high school social shark waters.
The premise is recounted near the start as a narrated history lesson. For decades the final week leading to high school graduation has lead to a student dying, and its been well documented that the curse has dated back over 40 years.
Each death is different, random in cause and in location, the only constant is its only one student who dies, and its within the final week leading to graduation. Once a death occurs everyone else is free to graduate safely and unharmed
The single mother of the lead actors somehow forgets her children are graduating high school that week and goes on vacation with a potential suitor, leaving them to fend for themselves, and she appears oblivious that the curse which was spoken about in great lengths in her home town for decades; has still decided to pick up and leave her kids, not showing a trace of concern for their potential safety.
The Daughter attends a frat party and unleashes the Ire of disgruntled star quarterback, that sets in motion deadly encounters for her and her brother when the gang of footballers  begins to terrorize them.
The movie is passable,  The curse is interpreted to be native american in origin, when we see an angry native indigenous ghost warrior carrying around a shaman stick, evoking a glimmer of a vengeful curse.  The Ghost warrior is never explained why he is there or what exactly the curse is.

The foreboding circumstances all points to a deadly confrontation between the football jocks and the young brother and sister duo, and that someone will die. Which begs the question will this satisfy the curse of downers grove or will the worst be still to come.  Comparative 80's films would be Tuff Turf, Bullies, and  3:15 ( aka class of 89) though these films are not directly relatable, but the notion of an individual facing a clique or a gang in order to protect and save themselves and thus find the strength to battle back the oppressing odds have similar themes.

Horror Movie Review #7

A Christmas Horror Story

A surprising anthology of 4 short stories woven together to prepare us for the coming of Krampus.
First and foremost, the clarification of Krampus' by definition Krampus is a counterpart of Santa, a beast who punishes the wicked children and takes them to his lair, as opposed to giving gifts to the good children.
This film is also not to be confused with the self-titled movie scheduled to be released on december 5th, 2015.
The Premise: Over a 12hour period on christmas eve, Krampus will rise and the doctrines of Krampus will begin to unfold on this sleepy mid-western town of Bailey Downs.
The first story has 3 students video documenting, an unsolved double homicide in their school.  The unrested
spirit is closing in on them as they delve deeper into the story. The second story revolves around the on duty investigating officer of that double homicide who is on medical leave, he takes his young family to cut down their first christmas tree.  He decides to enter a restricted property for the better trees and they take home a lot more than what they had bargain for.

The third story involves a husband who takes his family to visit his estranged rich aunt, Ironically his wicked children who drew the first glimpses of Krampus as the demon rises to the surface.  The final story is set in Santa's workshop, an infected Elf turns all the alleged immortal elves into terrifying zombies, which leads to Santa a face to face confrontation with the fully risen Krampus.  With the legendary William Shatner to ease us into the christmas spirit, A Christmas Horror Story is a simmer of suspense, mixed with a twisted sprinkle of surprise that goes down smoothly with Shatner's egg nog.  Its' substitutes the usual horror gore for a tingling winter chill as it goes back and forth between stories. A classic tale to appendage itself to a Black Christmas, if you are fan of that movie.  It doesn't allow itself to dip down as a b level movie, by taking itself seriously to give the viewer a movie with no stench of it being a christmas ham.

Horror Film Review #6

Green Inferno

It is an Eli Roth film,  if you are familiar with Roth's  body of work behind the camera, then he is mostly associated with torture porn big screen feature film adaptations. The most notarized would be the Hostel trilogy of films.  This movie is a tangent of Blum House productions  which has been ear marked as being the 7th of 10  films being released this year by the company, whose production model is usually to film in California as means of  cost controlling its over head. The movie did modestly well and exceeded the company's lower expectation. In contrast to its most recent double box office flop of  'Paranormal Activity The Ghost Dimension' and 'Jem and the Holograms'. which had high expectations.
The Premise: Green Inferno is a south American Horror story. Essentially university activists in a bid to protect some indigenous natives in the Peruvian jungle accidentally crash lands in the backyard of those they set out to protect, unaware that these savage natives are also cannibals.  The story is quite brilliant, the heroine played Lorenza Izzo ,who gets her spark of activism by a world issue lecture regarding treatment towards women, and in this multiple staged conclusion, she becomes engaged again as a victim of her own convictions. As Roth really drives home the dichotic irony of this film.  The plot of the movie is pretty laid out from beginning to end, the drama and tensions comes from actions and options remaining to the activists as their numbers dwindle.

Witnessing the fall in stature of their activist leader and the villainy of corporate business share a reversal of roles is also nicely crafted  layer to the film, giving brevity to what is a dark toned story.  This is a movie of little surprise or twists, but instead it is a straight in your face movie of man vs his environment  and those who enter in places they are not wanted. A movie that spear heads you to its point.