Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
If Black Christmas brings slashing to the holiday season then Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale brings Guillermo Del Toro. A Finnish horror film that was released in 2010 it gives you a Santa that is very different to the Jolly Old Saint Nick we are all used to.
We are into December, and the bells are jingling as we dust off those Christmas classics and pull them out of the cupboard for their yearly viewing. There’s enough good cheer on the TV to make Santa Claus puke, and for a few weeks, we pretend the world is a better place. However, what do you turn to when that cloying feeling of happiness becomes too much? You don’t want to completely give up on that Christmas feeling, but you do fancy seeing some slashing? Enter Black Christmas.
There are few filmmakers as frustrating as M. Night Shyamalan. When he’s good, he can shock and awe but when he’s bad he feels like a rip-off of himself. Someone trying to capture a magic that they don’t understand. While Devil didn’t come under his direction – that joy goes to John Erick Dowdle – it does come from his script and his fingers are all over it.
It’s no secret that your average fairytale is twistier than a pair of headphones pulled from your pocket and while Disney has done their best to clean them up there are still those that cling to the Brother Grimm way of telling these tales. Authors like Neil Gaiman have kept that tradition alive, and films like The Company Of Wolves make sure that Disney Princesses aren’t the only ones that find adventure in the woods.
Last year I sat down and watched every single Nightmare on Elm Street film before splurging my thoughts about them onto the internet. It was an endeavour that went from the dizzying heights of the first film to the genuine surprise of Dream Masters and New Nightmare to the absolute horror of Freddy’s Dead. It was also great fun. So, this year I decided to do the same and delve into another slasher franchise, Halloween. Now, obviously this would have made a lot more sense around a week ago, but there are ten fucking films, so give me a break. (I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but when discussing an entire franchise there will be the occasional titbit dropped.)
Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Potter career has been a brilliant example of how to do it. While he obviously has a comfort blanket lined with money to take the pressure off his shoulders, you still have to step back and admire a man who is willing to take the risks he has, which leads us to Swiss Army Man in which he plays a farting corpse.
Calling the zombie movie genre oversaturated was right about five years ago. Today, it’s gone far past that. We’ve had classic zombie movies, we’ve had running zombies, we’ve had zomromcoms, and we’ve had Arnie looking sad zombie movies. You name it; they’ve done it. So unless you have something new to bring to the table, then you are better off staying at home.
Despite the claims of those who are either lacking in imagination or presumably spent the entire time with their eyes focused on a phone, The Blair Witch Project is a scary film. It builds its tension to an unbearable level and reveals nothing but hints as to what is happening to its audience. Because of that, it has a mythology that is ripe for exploring and which seventeen years after the original Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett are returning to.
Stop-motion genuinely baffles me. Whether it’s Wallace & Gromit or Coraline, it almost doesn’t matter how good the film is, I am in awe that it exists at all. Which you could maybe say gives Laika Studios a bit of a free pass. Much like Aardman they are a group dedicated to stop-motion releases but they also happen to be brilliant.
Fede Alvarez’s attempt to tackle an Evil Dead remake/sequel/whatever it was intended to be, didn’t quite take off. It lost that spark which made the original the enduring classic it is today and replaced it with a nastiness. However, nasty doesn’t necessarily mean bad and in that nastiness, there was something that made you want to keep an eye on what would come next.
Ramblings About Wrestling 