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Whoa! Wasn’t expecting much from this one after I’ve heard it’s from the same director who did “Creep”. I mean Creep was a fine movie, but nothing extremely out of the ordinary – running around the london underground with an evil mutant behind your back – sure it was ok. But this … Well apparently that guy gets better with age. This is third movie – so the title stands for it too – and well I haven’t seen the second one (I will) but this time it’s something completely different.

It’s not a classic horror story in fact. It’s more of a twisted thriller that some of the well known hollywood guys used to do. Won’t tell you which ones because that’d reveal too much. The plot is pretty simple – 6 friends and a sailing boat on the coast of florida. They go sailing and everything is fine until they hear a distress call from someone, but they can’t make much out of it. Then the storm suddenly comes and tips the boat over. 5 of them survive and witness that out of nowhere a giant cruise ship comes along. They board it but it appears to be deserted so they walk around trying to find help. And then the killing starts by some unknown masked stranger. That’s pretty standard to that point, right? Yeah. To about 25th minute it’s just a typical B-slasher movie and when the action picks up the viewer realizes that at this pace there won’t be anybody to kill and it’d been only 30 minutes of the movie. And then comes the unexpected twist that makes the whole thing so great. It has many twists and turns of the plot that follow that – so it doesn’t get boring and keeps you thrilled to see what happens but that one moment could be in my top 10 of the good story leads.

Can’t really say much about why this is so great without revealing too much but you just HAVE to see this movie and keep a close eye on that director. If his fourth film will top this one that means we got a new hero in our little horror community. Yay!

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Stephen King was more scary in the good ol’ days. And “IT” is a movie that made a generation of kids afraid of clowns. “IT” was a TV movie that’s nearly 3 hours long and has two distinct parts. One of them is the kids of Derry town battling an evil clown / monster who’s killing kids in this town. He lives in the sewers and uses all sorts of drains and pipes underground to erupt blood form ‘em. The acting is really good, all of the kids did a really good job. The clown is scary even with the early 90′s cheesy effects and his acting, and especially his voice. This is “scary” in the very essence. And if you watch it at night, alone it can get to you.

The kids manage to kill the “thing” and it all goes quiet for years. They leave the small town and all become successful. Well except for Michael who stays in Derry. One day he calls all of his friends and tells them “it’s back!”. And since they promised that if it comes back they will too, everyone’s back in Derry. And this part is a bit slower, although it has it’s moments too. All in all this is a classic that DEFINES scary clowns for all the horror movies to come. Not watching it if you call yourself a horror fan is a terrible mistake!

Besides it’s fun to see everything’s mechanical / puppets rather than computers all the way.

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I think this is the last part of the Alien saga. Because Alien 4 was a disaster – a terrible, typical space action horror that didn’t match the previous three. So here we are again – Ripley, Hicks and Neut dream their sweet dreams while in cryo sleep but little do they know that somehow (now that’s tricky because I can’t think of a way that’d happen unless bishop did it) a facehugger got onboard. The cryo shuttle crashes into a planet that’s also a maximum security prison for men, but only 25 of them are there since the facility has been discontinued.

First of all being the only woman in a world where most men haven’t seen a woman in years is a pretty nice setting. Then along comes our little friend with teeth and the whole place turns crazy. In Aliens there were a bit more even chances since the marines had guns and flamethrowers. But since this is an abandoned prison there are no weapons whatsoever.

David Fincher as a director does surprisingly well since he wasn’t really known back then, and that was years before fight club. And with good direction, dark, gothic corridors of an abandoned prison and terrified inmates with no weapons a bit of alien monster creates a perfect mix that’s a constant reminder that some time ago there were good horror movies. And I mean REALLY good.

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This is an almost direct continuation of Pet Sematary – with the same director and a couple of good actors – namely the kid from “American History X”. Of course it’s not really as good as the first – it goes a bit more into the style of “Tales from the Crypt” but that was the 90′s right?

So after his mother dies the kid with his father moves into the familiar town where the Creeds had some of their merry adventures. Some animals die first of course, then they come back in a bit more cheesy fashion, and then it’s time for the humans. They retain some sort of humanity this time – they don’t plan to kill just everybody which is a bit refreshing. The acting is really good most of the time so basically the only problem with this movie is the cheesyness that was so typical in the 90′s. But we can live with that because it’s still better than too much computerized monsters.

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Classics are something that we either think it’s too cheesy for modern standards and skip, or we’ve seen ‘em years ago when we were young and stupid. Now that we’re older and still stupid and recent horror films make us barf going back to the classics is a pretty good idea. Especially if those classics were based on a Stephen King novel because in the 80′s he was in his prime. But let’s get back to the subject here. Which is Pet Sematary (misspelled on purpose) and what this “Sematary” is, is basically a bunch of pets burried close to an old indian burial ground. Which of course is evil, cursed, posessed and Barbra Streissand. Or whatever. Long story short – animal burried on the indian burial ground have the tendency to “come back to life” – although not showing any typical living symptoms – i.e. no heartbeat. They can be killed again of course, this time for good. So a spooky old burial ground and a pet cementary (I’m sick of that samatary name already), boo hoo. What’s missing in this picture?

Well of course a happy family – in this case it’s the “Creeds” but most of the action revolves around the father – Lewis Creed and his 4/5 year old son – Gage. They move into the town, buy a house, start a new life. It’s all cheerful and overly positive top to bottom. Until the daughters cat gets ran over by a car and the loving father along with a local old-timer (amazing role!) go and bury the cat. Of course they bury it in that burial ground, because otherwise it’d not make any sense, right? Yeah, as soon as the cat died we knew what would be next. But in this case it’s not a bad thing. So they bury the damn animal and the next day it comes back but with an attitude. A lot meaner, angrier and hissing constantly – so yeah it worked but not exactly. But the family is sort of happy again and perfect.

The culmination comes at a family picnic when running after a runaway kite little Gage stumbles to the road right under a pickup truck. Of course what worked on animals could’ve worked on humans too, right? So the father digs up his son and carries him to the indian burial. And indeed he comes back, but a little twisted – think “child’s play” or somewhere along those lines. And the rest is a really nicely done movie with great atmosphere, not too many scary elements but great acting and tension that grabs the attention (hey that rhymes!).

And that leads me to a little conclusion – I am watching those old movies recently and I see that on average the acting is about 10x better in the old movies than in the newer ones. Maybe we have dumber people with each generation that can’t play a chair if asked. Dunno. The special effects in those old movies are terrible of course in most cases, but they make it up with really great performances. And in a horror movie that’s more important than some CGI. Go and see it to get my point.

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Since there’s not many good new horrors right now I’ll focus on some of the classics.
This movie is based on a Stephen King novel (which one isn’t, right? ) but thankfully one of the earlier ones. It’s about a writer who crashes during a winter storm and ends up “nursed” to health by an evil-nurse in a cabin, in the middle of nowhere, who happens to be his number one fan and isn’t planning on letting him go. And Kathy Bates did an amazing job in portraying the psycho-nurse – and was rightfully awarded an oscar. If you need reference to great psychopath acting here it is. It can’t get better then this and if it can it didn’t to date.

It is hard to make a scary movie that’s set mostly in one room, but it did the trick here. It’s buzzing with emotion and it terrifies not by acts of violence and monsters but by the idea that this could happen to every one of us, and it probably did happen to some people. Of course setting the action in a single room must mean there’s plenty of good dialogue, and that’s exactly what’s going on here. Bates is just perfect and the writer guy does good enough to keep the pace of the movie up. Another classic and a must see. It has influenced everyone, from modern horror writers to “family guy” and the simpsons. You need to see it. Oh and read the book too.

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Ridley Scott made a great impression with the first Alien film, and since it was a success, the studios decided to make a sequel. They chose James Cameron this time and well let’s say the movie is entirely different. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, right?

In the sequel Ripley is still the main character but instead of a sci-fi thriller we have an action horror of sorts. Evil alien picking remaining crew members one by one might’ve been scarier than a bunch of marines with guns fighting the aliens, but fortunately there are also some one-on-one scenes here too.

The story picks up right after the first movie (well 57 years of Ripley drifting through space wouldn’t make much of a story now would it?) and it’s pretty logical here.
Of course nobody believes her when she comes back, she’s degraded and has a poor job. Also so many years passed that she had survived all of her friends and even her daughter which adds up to the loneliness. On top of that she has nightmares about the alien constantly. So when a colony on the planet they have discovered the alien eggs before stops responding, she decides to go. With a bunch of marines and a company android of course. To take care of the alien and maybe get some closure too. Or whatever her reasons were. I wouldn’t go back after what she survived but I guess women are different.

This movie also had some things that defined the cinema in the later years – motion sensors and their sounds, computerized turrets, pulse cannons, figthing in air ducts etc.
There’s also more about the alien itself, this time we see it’s not a single predator (pun intended) but rather works in a pack. Similarly to ants the aliens also have a queen whose directions they follow without question.

The effects are well… 1980′s so sometimes we can see that those are just alien models and not “sort-of-real” aliens, but come on! Look at the production date and shut up already! Yeah, exactly.
There’s a bunch of varied characters that display all sorts of human emotions and motives, which is a nice thing after oh too many boring wooden-actors in many other space movies.

So to sum it all up – this is a completely different kind of movie than Ridley Scott’s first “Alien” but I think it’s really well worth the watch, since it explains a helluva lot more than the first one, and finally we’re not as helpless against that ugly bastard! At least not entirely. If you haven’t seen it yet you must’ve just been woken up from a 57 year long sleep or something. Go! Now! Classic alert!

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A british road movie? Seriously? And a horror too? Well yessir it is reality and not too bad at that. Zakes is not your typical good guy – he’s more of a looser who’s job is to hang posters in the truckstop bathrooms. Pretty lousy, I know. His girlfriend – Beth – is a bit tired of the routine and monotony of their relationship and since she’s with him while he’s driving the british M1 highway from toilet to toilet, she does bitch a lot. At first it’s annoying, like – Hey, live that poor guy alone. But after a while we can clearly see that he IS a looser and she’s been right. So the setting couldn’t be more romantic – heavy rain at night on a highway. And in the middle of their fight they notice a woman in a truck that looks like she’s being kidnapped. What will they do? Oh the questions! They manage to put their fight aside for a little while, but then it comes back since they don’t really know if they did actually see something in the heavy rain. So they start fighting again which leads to them being separated, and here’s where all the action picks up. The first part sets the mood and it does so perfectly. The acting is great, the heavy rain and dim lighting work great. Then the plot-twists start. And there are SO MANY of them that at some point it becomes boring, since we know that everything will turn out exactly opposite of what we’d expect. And then it does. It’s not bad, it’s a little overdone especially in the second part. But we can’t really say it’s a flaw since this movie is pretty original, especially for a british film.

Go and check it out, it’s not really scary but interesting and well made. And full of plot twists.

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H.R. Giger and Ridley Scott are responsible for one of the classics of space horror, that spawned hundreds or even thousands of clones and a bunch of sequels and “vs predator” mixes. But the first one was something different. H.R. Giger designed the Alien character and a lot of the alien ship elements, that became classics and were re-used in many movies and computer games to come. Sure this movie has some flaws – some visible strings, some sketchy camera work at times and the acting could’ve been better. But it was first in its class and nobody still managed to beat that atmosphere or to create an alien that was more scary than this one. Thumbs up for the duo! So in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 30 years here’s the plot: A tanker spaceship en route to earth receives a weird signal from a nearby planet. They think it’s a request for help and go to investigate the source. While there they discover some weird freaky alien ship elements and our friend the facehugger who jumps at one of the astronauts and attaches itself to his face planting the alien baby in his belly. Or something along those lines. The alien baby grows quickly and bursts out of the chest of the poor guy. Which is one of the most classic scenes of horror movies EVER! And then it grows even bigger and decides it’s time for hunting. The rest is history! And a bunch of sequels try to explain more. If you haven’t seen this already YOU SIMPLY JUST HAVE TO!

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This was actually one of the first movies that came out after the introduction of the divx format so it was pirated a lot and probably a lot more people saw it because of that. But is it worth it? What exactly is this movie about? Well basically it’s about space parasites invading a small town with teenagers being affected while in high school. Sounds typical? Well it sure is! You can predict pretty much every “plot twist” here and all the cliches are sort of boring. Not too scary of couse, since scooby doo teen-american-horrors are never really scary. Well the only scary thing is that people got PAID to make this movie, just as they were paid (a lot!) to make the twilight fiasco. It’s a no-brainer, an empty, cliche-ridden teen-horror that is so standard and cliche that the only reason to watch it is to laugh about it with a bunch of friends. Don’t have any friends? Well then just skip this one since it’s just a badly done piece riding on the “invasion of body-snatchers” idea.