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halloween movie fest 2017, movies fifteen through twenty-one.

By Scott • On 2017-11-02 • In another day. another movie., halloween movie fest, hmf17, movies, scott, vampires • 7 min read

Happy belated Halloween! The good news is that I was able to watch 26(!) movies for HMF17. The bad news is that I never got around to writing about half of them before the actual holiday.

Fortunately, there are no rules on RtM so I can just post Halloween themed content well into November.

Movie Fifteen – Don’t Breathe

“There is nothing a man cannot do once he accepts the fact that there is no god.”

I don’t have much to say about this one. I liked Alvarez’s direction, but not his writing. Aside from the interesting premise and terrific performance by Stephen Lang as the villain, the rest of the story felt weak in the midst of an otherwise well-crafted film.

Mostly I just didn’t care what happened to these characters. In a larger slasher film, that’s beside the point. We actually only need to care about and root for the final girl. Whether or not we care for the more ill-fated characters or instead are meant to enjoy watching them die is up to the filmmakers — both are common. Don’t Breathe is different. If I’m going to spend the majority of the film trapped in a house with two characters trying to survive, I need to give a shit about them in a way that isn’t rooted entirely in cliches.

Unexpected aside: I’m realizing I need to change the format of Halloween Movie Fests and ‘Another Day, Another Movie’ for future installments (if there are any). The whole point of this blog — when I’m actually writing it — is that I don’t waste time on stuff I don’t like or care about. Partly because it’s a waste of energy unless I’m offering some genuine critique in a larger cultural context, but even more because I’d rather learn from someone who loves a movie I didn’t get than shit all over a film someone else really loves, quite possibly for great reasons. This is especially true regarding classics I didn’t like or see the appeal of.

It’s not that I never want to be critical, it’s just that it requires more care and thought than what I have time to offer in this format.

I think I might try to think of a way to lean more heavily into the curation — which is what I actually like doing to begin with — for future HMF’s, instead of boring my friends with uninspired complaints about films.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? No.

Where Can You Watch It? Starz.

Movie Sixteen – Tetsuo: The Iron Man

And here I thought House was bonkers. Tetsuo is fucked up — intentionally so. A gonzo body horror metaphor about the replacement of the natural world with the industrial world, the film is less a well-drawn story and more a series of horrifying moments and images following three characters as a man is mysteriously transformed into a metal monstrosity after a hit-and-run.

Super low budget in the best possible way, this is the perfect example of how wide-ranging the possibilities within film are.

Tetsuo is full of gross out scenes that go way over the top, it’s dark and violent, getting more and more insane with each of its 77 minutes. It definitely draws inspiration from films like Eraserhead.

This is one of those ones that felt like it nailed everything it was trying to do perfectly, even if personally it’s not the sort of movie I want to rewatch again and again.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Maybe as part of a more in-depth film study, but probably not for fun.

Where Can You Watch It? Kanopy (if your library participates).

Movie Seventeen – XX

“I have made my contribution. I like to believe that I’ve made a difference in all of this. I have been blessed to watch over you all these years, and to watch over Andy, to prepare the world for this glorious day! There’s nothing to be afraid of Cora. It’s his time, is all. Praise, praise his darkness.”

XX is an anthology of four horror shorts, all written and directed by women — including St. Vincent. As is almost always the case with anthologies like this, it was uneven, but solid overall.

What I really want to write about is Karyn Kasuma. Last year I absolutely loved her film The Invitation during HMF, and her segment in XX just confirms to me that she is a filmmaker we should all be really excited about.

Her short, “Her Only Living Son,” brilliantly uses the Rosemary’s Baby concept, in large part wrestling with white male privilege and how it creates and feeds monsters. That sounds like the short is really political or preachy, but it isn’t. It’s just the sort of horror that tackles the horrifying things in ordinary life by exaggerating it with a horror lens.

I have to go rewatch The Invitation now, but I also can’t wait for Kasuma to do more.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Probably just the Karyn Kusama segment.

Where Can You Watch It? Netflix.

Movie Eighteen – Coraline

“Hush and shush, for the Beldam might be listening.”

On their own, Laika animation company’s stop-motion films and Neil Gaiman are among my very favorite things. Combine them, and I’m obviously all over it!

I love dark fare created for kids — not that you need to be a kid to enjoy this film. Kids need stories with fear and darkness in them, especially when the hero prevails. Reading scary stories and watching scary shows and movies can be like an inoculation for the greater fear of life. The world is dark and scary, and it’s far better to practice dealing with those themes in small doses, in a safe environment with clearly established frames for where the story begins and ends.

Stories can teach us to be brave, empathetic and compassionate, resilient, and hopeful. I want all kids to experience as much of that as possible.

Here’s Gaiman himself on writing Coraline:

“When I [started writing] ‘Coraline’, I thought, ‘I am going to make my villain as bad a villain as I can… and I’m not going to give Coraline magic powers, and I’m not going to make her some kind of special Chosen One, and she’s not going to be a secret princess or anything like that — she’s going to be a smart little girl who’s going to be scared and is going to keep doing the right thing anyway, and that’s what brave is. And she is going to triumph by being smarter and braver.’” (transcription credit)

Classic Neil. I love that guy.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Most definitely.

Where Can You Watch It? Netflix.

Movie Nineteen – Bedknobs and Broomsticks

“Treguna, Makoidees, Trecorum, Sadis Dee.”

When I was a little kid, around the age of ten or eleven, my brother and I did the same thing almost every weekend. When we arrived with our mom in Wallkill, after she would retreat to her room for the majority of the time until Monday, Matt and I would watch Newsies and Bedknobs and Broomsticks almost every Friday night. Over and over, weekend after weekend.

I didn’t think of it much at the time, it’s just what we did.

Looking back, I thought more about what was happening with all of these revisitations. I realized what I was doing was immersing myself in stories about orphans who find a place where they are wanted and celebrated. Both films are about lonely people who become part of a family that isn’t about blood, but belonging. It salving a wound that I couldn’t possibly understand fully at that point.

Watching it as an adult, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is silly, and at least one set piece too long. And still, I’m moved by what the movie meant to me as a child. That realization years later played no small part in the decision to make my entire master’s thesis about the power of fiction in our lives.

This film was a security blanket for me as a child, providing a familiarity and sense of home for two hours at a time.

Also, the scene where all the old armor and weapons fights off the Nazis was my favorite scene from all of collected cinema for a solid two or three years of my life. Remember when Nazi hatred was the least controversial stance possible?

Will I Ever Watch It Again? If I ever have kids, we’re watching this movie. Also, fuck Nazis.

Where Can You Watch It? No one has it streaming for free right now.

Movie Twenty – What We Do in the Shadows

“Wait, let’s kill them.”

“Well let’s just see what other safety points they have… and then maybe we’ll kill them.”

I wrote about this one for last year’s fest, and it’s all still true. Here’s a slightly edited rehash:

“What We Do In the Shadows is hilarious, smart, clever, impressively filmed, and never overstretches its premise. That last bit is miraculous, given how quickly this could have either gotten old or gone overboard — especially with the mockumentary format.”

It’s tricky to make a sweet, silly, endearing comedy about the murderous undead, but Clement and Waititi nail it.

I can’t wait for Thor: Ragnarok, when the world at large will finally be aware of how amazing Taika Waititi is. His work is sharp and funny. He revels in the flaws and awkwardness of his characters, which is such a huge part of the joy I find in his movies.

I have a soft spot for stories about the search for belonging and identity, and no one does it better that him.

I am decidedly pro-Taika!

Will I Ever Watch It Again? At least once a year, ad infinitum. This is one of those few movies where when I see it available on a streaming service it takes a conscious choice not to just click on it and watch it again.

Where Can You Watch It? Amazon Prime, or come over to my place because I fucking love this movie.

Movie Twenty-One – The Babadook

“You can’t get rid of the Babadook.
I’ll wager with you
I’ll make you a bet.
The more you deny,
The stronger I get.
You start to change when I get in.
The Babadook growing right under your skin.”

File this one under perfectly executed, creepy ass horror films that make me cry.

This movie hits home for me in a way few films ever have. As I wrote for HMF15, “as someone who struggles with depression, anxiety, and severe insomnia, as well as being someone who grew up as a child with too many parallels to Samuel, this film was both difficult and therapeutic. The last time I felt this much deep internal connection between my own childhood and the thematic territory of a film was Where the Wild Things Are.”

After a second viewing the film was just as powerful and moving for me. I was even more impressed this time around with Jennifer Kent’s writing and direction. She hit this way out of the park, Aaron Judge-style.

Gorgeous filmmaking, and I can’t wait for her next film, The Nightingale.

I’d love it if you read my thoughts on what The Babadook meant to me when I watched it the first time, HERE, just scroll past Frenzy.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Absolutely. It resonates inside my soul and I’d hate to stay away too long.

Where Can You Watch It? Netflix and Showtime.

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halloween movie fest 2017 is here (and not a moment too soon)!

By Scott • On 2017-10-02 • In another day. another movie., movies, scott, vampires, zombies • 2 min read

You wouldn’t know it from the weather in Brooklyn, but the time has come for another Halloween Movie Fest. Or, as my great-great-grandather always used to say, “Thank God, it’s Halloween Movie Fest!” Or, TGIHMF. (How would I trademark that? I feel like it’s definitely going to catch on with a wider public.)

HMF is my favorite annual glorious waste of my own time. I really need it this year, because the world is falling apart and depression is a fucking asshole.

I am so ready for this excursion into the familiar world of Halloween and its related cinema, a tradition that began for me in 2009.

I love Halloween, with its deep reliance on story and myth. For me, it’s like an entire holiday dedicated to telling ghost stories around a fire on a chilly autumn evening. HMF has come to be a means of extending that feeling throughout more of the month.

For previous fests, I would select a specific number of films and watch a movie a day. [That’s always the format for Another Day, Another Movie]. However, this year I’ve chosen 31 films, one for every day of the month, and I’ll get through as many as I can. I hereby promise all four people who read this blog that I will watch no fewer than 21 films. However, I doubt my schedule will allow me to watch a movie a day for the entire month of October. I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try, but odds aren’t great.

The 2017 list includes some straight scary fare, a few horror comedies (because obviously), some lighter Halloween-friendly films, and Room 237, a documentary about interpretations of The Shining and the intense devotion to the film’s many mysteries (I might be stretching my own premise a bit with that last one).

19 of the 31 are films I’ve seen before, so obviously I’m leaning into some favorites I’m in the mood to rewatch. Many are films I loved after seeing them for the first time during previous Halloween Movie Fests.

Here are the films, in no particular order:

Shaun of the Dead
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
The Shining
Room 237
Under the Shadow
Don’t Breathe
The Void
XX
28 Days Later
What We Do in the Shadows
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
It (2017)
The Haunting
House
Phantasm
Beetlejuice
Dead of Night
Pet Sematary
Housebound
Pontypool
Cabin in the Woods
The Babadook
Let the Right One In
It Follows
The Evil Dead
Evil Dead II
Army of Darkness
Coraline
The Devil’s Backbone
Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some movies to watch.

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night ten: nosferatu the vampyre. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-29 • In another day. another movie., hmf16, movies, scott, vampires • 2 min read

“Time is an abyss, profound as a thousand nights. Centuries come and go.
To be unable to grow old is terrible. Death is not the worst…
Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities?”

All these years as a film lover, and this is the first Werner Herzog film I’ve ever seen.

Herzog believes, along with many others, that the greatest film to come out of Germany was Nosferatu, which is basically an expressionist rendering of Dracula, but with the names and a few story elements changed in an attempt to avoid issues getting the rights from Bram Stoker’s widow. It didn’t work, because it was obviously Dracula, and they attempted to destroy all copies of Nosferatu at one point. Fortunately, they failed, and once the story came to be public domain, the surviving copies were released on a larger scale. Anyway, Herzog’s love for the film is why he decided to pay homage with an update.

The thing that grabbed me right away about Herzog’s directing is that the man certainly knows how to find places to shoot, then shoots the hell out of them. From the opening credits over the real life mummified remains at El Museo de las Momias to the haunting natural landscapes traversed by Jonathan Harker on his way to visit Dracula, every shot added to the haunting scope of the film. This is a beautiful movie. The places were big and timeless, the city life eerie and lonely, filmed to capture the essence of how small we are in the face of eternity, which is obviously perfect for a vampire film.

Even during a fantastical story of immortal monsters, Herzog’s naturalistic way of shooting characters and dialogue makes it easy to see that this is a filmmaker who is also a celebrated documentarian. At least, it’s naturalistic in early scenes. Eventually the film takes on different visual tone.

There are some slow, awkward moments in the film’s early-going, but they fall away as the film’s hypnotic pace takes hold.

Fun fact: To avoid dubbing for American audiences, they actually shot this film in two languages at the same time. They would shoot the scenes in German and then in English, so two versions of the film exist. I watched the first third in English and then switched to German with subtitles, which I enjoyed much more.

My biggest takeaway from this one is that Klaus Kinski is my absolute favorite Dracula of all time. Such a sad and lonely monster, but a monster all the same. “I no longer attach any importance to sunshine or the glittering fountains that youth is so fond of. I love the darkness and the shadows.”

Just a supercut of all Kinski’s scenes would be worth the price of admission, but Nosferatu the Vampyre has much more to offer than that. This is a beautiful, haunting, mesmerizing film.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Yes, this one deserves revisiting.

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night nine: trouble every day. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-29 • In another day. another movie., hmf16, movies, scott, vampires • 1 min read

“You were in love with her?”
“It’s not the right word for it.”

This one is disturbing, even by HMF standards.

It’s a slow burn. A very quiet film with long spans shot with no dialogue, and characters who aren’t particularly verbose even when they do speak.

The muted quality makes the scenes of violence that much more jarring. The bloody scenes are themselves still somewhat muted, the camera forces us to watch when we’d rather get a cut or a new angle, anything to give us some distance from the ordinariness of the horror.

Even the film’s quietest scenes are full of menace and danger. The is a movie colored with tones of insanity, desire, isolation, compulsion, power, and violence.

Rape is usually a subtext in vampire stories. However a given mythology works in a particular vampire world, there is almost always the inclusion of the forcible and violent penetration of another against their will. Clare Denis captured that violence to horrifying effect in this film.

These are stories about killing someone for their blood. It’s not that Trouble Every Day is the only film where this inherent violence is dealt with head on, but it definitely got under my skin more than most others.

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When the film came out it received a fair amount of hate. But while Trouble Every Day isn’t perfect, the reaction against it was undeserved. As with a film like Peeping Tom, the negative response might just underscore how intentionally troubling the film is. As years have passed, the film has found its audience and appreciators, making the recent Fandor list of 20 greatest films directed by women, based on responses from 50 critics and cinephiles.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Give me some time to think about that. I’m not sure I can go back into this world again.

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night eight: dracula (a.k.a. the horror of dracula). [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-29 • In another day. another movie., hmf16, scott, vampires • 2 min read

“If you look over there you can see the sun coming up.”

Hammer Films was a London-based film studio that dominated the international horror landscape for decades. They had big hits that weren’t vampire related, but it was their series of gothic, increasingly sexualized vampire movies that had the biggest impact on pop culture. Their films didn’t just influence future vampire movies, but future films in general, especially horror (unsurprisingly).

One large influence was that Hammer continually pushed the envelope in terms of what sorts of things were shown on the big screen. They found ways to show you what was happening, instead of merely implying it through reaction shots to the more violent moments.

For example, my favorite moment in Dracula… **I’m going to say spoiler alert, just in case, but this particular part of Dracula probably shouldn’t be a surprise.**

Still with me? Okay, my favorite moment was Dracula’s death by exposure to sunlight. It was impressively explicit for its time.

Dracula was the first of their vampire series, retitled The Horror of Dracula in the US because of the fear that Americans are kind of dumb and would confuse the new film with the Bela Lugosi version released 27 years earlier.

This movie certainly has its silly bits, oh so many silly bits. Many of the bad bits were a product of the time the movie was made, but they were nonetheless distracting for me. To name a few: awkward or ham-fisted acting by many of the supporting cast, wooden blocking, and way too many moments where the story was moved forward by having a character sit and write thoughtfully while narrating their own thoughts through voiceover… we get it, the book was epistolary, that doesn’t mean I need to see your actors writing or reading letters or journals for 3 minutes at a time in the film version.

Overall, the winning moments outweigh the considerable weaknesses, especially in terms of legacy. There are so many iconic images and moments that still reverberate through horror films today, especially vampire films. If you’re making a vampire movie in general, or a Dracula movie in particular, you have to decide how you are going to interact with the legacy of these films. They’re that significant.

The most important aspect of that legacy is Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, roles they would go on revisit again and again. When Hammer Films decided to reinvent the franchise by moving it forward to present day, they even had Cushing play a descendent of Van Helsing to keep him around (which should be noted by current moviegoers who act like silly plot devices like that were created in the 80’s just in time to bring about the death of cinema).

Will I Ever Watch It Again? If there comes a time for a larger vampire movie festival, I would watch a string of Hammer vampire movies, starting with a rewatch of this one.

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night six: martin. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-28 • In hmf16, movies, scott, vampires • 1 min read

“Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There’s no real magic ever.”

Another day, another vampire movie.

Even with all of the success that George Romero had with his Living Dead movies, if you ask him, his favorite of all his films is 1977’s Martin, the story of a man who is definitely a sexually motivated serial killer, and may or may not be a vampire. He certainly believes he is an 84 year old undead monster, as does his hyper-religious and superstitious uncle.

Martin is another politically tinged B horror movie from Romero, with the director using this outing to engage themes of sex, sexual violence, mental illness, suburban ennui, and religion. This is a vampire movie for a skeptical, disillusioned generation.

martin

A small and quiet villain, relying on injecting his victims with sedatives to gain the upper hand, Martin is a disturbing character without ever being imposing. He is lonely, maladjusted, and strange. Whether he is right about being a vampire or not, he is certainly mentally ill. He is also the whiniest vampire I can remember, a bit like the Luke Skywalker of the undead set.

As always, Romero gets a lot out of very little when it comes to budget and resources. Like all of his major works, Martin could come out today and still be relevant and interesting.

Also of note is that this is the first time Romero worked with gore legend Tom Savini, a relationship that would pay immediate dividends the following year with Dawn of the Dead.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Probably. Especially if I decide to do a larger vampire movie fest for a whole month, which seems increasingly likely to me.

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night five: a girl walks home alone at night. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-23 • In hmf16, movies, scott, vampires • 2 min read

“You’re sad. You don’t remember what you want. You don’t remember wanting.
It passed long ago. And nothing ever changes.”

Before getting started, I already summed my thoughts on this one up pretty well last year, without spoilers, which you can read: here.

After this year’s viewing, I still absolutely love this film.

A few specific things I love… spoilers follow.

Girl Walks Home - Car

I love the performances. It’s no small thing to get to know the characters so well with such sparse dialogue, but these actors make it work. Sheila Vand and Arash Marandi are especially great. I’m sad I haven’t seen him in anything else.

I love the way writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour subverts roles in the movie, not just culturally and traditionally, but within the confines of the story itself.

The pimp is set up in every way as the predator, covered in tigers on his clothing, his jewelry, his tattoo. There’s an aggression in the SEX tattooed on his throat. He even has a tattoo of PAC-MAN about to eat a ghost (itself an example of the role of predator switching back and forth). He has animals of prey mounted on his walls. Multiple characters are victimized by him in short order. He takes whatever he wants. Yet he was the prey all along.

This is the most obvious example. It represents the Girl’s predilection for preying on men who prey on women, and the shift of power.

Less obvious role switching and subversion of expectations includes the fact that Arash is dressed as a cartoonish Dracula, coming across the Girl in the night while high on ecstasy to tell her he is Dracula, all the while she is an actual vampire. Yet, while being a vampire, it is the Girl who lets Arash pierce her with the earrings he stole.

The one dressed for the part isn’t what he looks like, the one you expect to bleed isn’t the one who bleeds, the one who normally has the power is actually helpless.

They are small things that can stand out in a movie that is this quiet and deliberate, where gestures and facial expressions do so much of the storytelling. Where everything is so intentional and reveals the characters to us so impressively.

I love this scene:

She is immortal, we don’t know for sure how old she is, but we can sense the emptiness and loneliness. She’s not sure why, but somehow Arash gets into her head. She dreams of him at night, walking to her out of the light, down into the darkness where she lives forever.

There’s that moment, when she’s alone in the frame, that big space of emptiness behind her. We know Arash is going to enter, but it takes several beats longer than it normally would in another film. When it seems like he is going to enter, he still doesn’t. It makes us feel the anticipation, the waiting, the loneliness. And then he does enter the frame, and they slowly come together.

He exposes his throat to her, having no idea how vulnerable he is in that moment, how dangerous she is. Yet, that’s how vulnerability works. We’re always giving the other the potential to destroy us.

And I love that scene at the end. Arash knows what the Girl has done. We’re not sure if he can go through with it, still run away with her. He gets back in the car, the cat sitting between them. The cat would be hilarious and adorable regardless of context. However, here, it represents what she’s done. It represents what he knows she’s done. It sits there between them, but then, they look at each other.

I love this movie.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Yes. As I wrote last year, I’d watch this on on repeat.

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night three: the lost boys. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-19 • In hmf16, music, scott, vampires • 1 min read

Now you know what we are. Now you know what you are. You’ll never grow old, Michael, and you’ll never die. But you must feed!

I’m probably one of the last 80’s kids to see this movie for the first time.

The Lost Boys is awesome and terrible, but it is awesome in ways that are mostly silly, and terrible in ways that are mostly enjoyable.

Interestingly, since they came out the same year, The Lost Boys has pretty much the same story as Near Dark, but with a more playful tone, and some family drama and Goonies thrown in. Also, some-crazy-how, there is significantly more narrative sense in The Lost Boys. For example, no inexplicable blood transfusions in a garage that cure vampirism.

Anyway, this movie is delightfully absurd, and I was never fully sure if that absurdity was intentional or accidental. Kiefer Sutherland is growling away like a crazy person, as he is wont to do. The Coreys added some lovable, terribly acted exuberance and silliness. The vampire deaths mostly don’t make any sense (but its okay, because they explained it away with a line of dialogue). It also did for water guns what Little Monsters would eventually do for flashlights.

This is the vampire movie the 80’s simply needed to produce. It just had to happen.

Also, concerning the 80’s, one question:

As someone who lived through most of the 80’s, I still need to ask, what the hell was happening in the 80’s?!? How did Hollywood produce an R rated kids movie?! The Lost Boys is largely about adjusting to divorce, growing up, potential step-parents, the dangers of peer pressure and drugs, and what it’s like as siblings change at different speeds as they become adults.

Those themes all make sense for a vampire movie for teens. Obviously, vampires are a great way to tell stories of addiction, adjustment, estrangement, and alienation. It’s the R rating that is just so amusingly nonsensical. Somehow, it worked in the 80’s

All in all, The Lost Boys is a worthy addition to the HMF canon.

Also, there’s this fucking guy! The 80’s, amirite?!

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night two: ‘cronos’. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-15 • In another day. another movie., hmf16, scott, vampires • 1 min read

“I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I think it’s better if we stay together.”

The second night of HMF and I’m revisiting a favorite from nights of Halloween past.

Guillermo del Toro’s debut feature has all of the themes he comes back to again and again. Del Toro himself said:

“To me, Cronos contains the essence of what I want to do … a sincere declaration of how I view the world.”

Both literally and figuratively, this is vintage del Toro.

His best work uses and subverts genre trappings and fantastical horror to showcase the beauty and monstrosity of humanity. The horror of the monsters in the del Toro canon always pale in comparison to what humans are willing to do to one another in a quest for power, money, or youth.

Del Toro said of Cronos, “I do what I’ve done in Devil’s Backbone, what I’ve done in Pan’s Labyrinth, etc. Which is, I take the central monster figure and I make it the saddest figure in the tale.”

This is a story of the inherent tragedy of vampire lore. One of the central themes in many vampire stories is the loss of humanity in the pursuit of immortality. The inability to accept the reality of death results in a half life. Vampires are immortal, they reject death, but only by becoming death. They live forever, but only in darkness, only by consuming life itself. #fucktwilight

These stories are often about the destructive potential of the human quest for immortality. Thus, Guillermo del Toro is the perfect storyteller for the genre, and it in turn is a perfect playground for his first feature.

Cronos is arrestingly grotesque and beautiful, often at the same time. A monster story about what it means to be human. A horror film about love, family, redemption, mortality, and sacrifice. Or to put it more simply, Cronos is Guillermo del Toro at his best.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? Most definitely. As is easily seen above, Cronos is included amongst my very favorite Halloween Movie Fest films from the seven years I’ve done it.

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night one: ‘near dark’. [halloween movie fest, 2016.]

By Scott • On 2016-10-15 • In another day. another movie., hmf16, movies, scott, vampires • 1 min read

“Boy, you people sure stay up late.”

“We keep odd hours.”

And we’re off! Night one kicks off with Kathryn Bigelow’s cult classic about a guy who tries to convince a young lady to engage in some casual sex, and as these things often go, she turns out to be a vampire. Our young cowboy finds himself thrown in with a gang of asshole vampires who terrorize bar-flys, truck drivers, and hitchhikers along remote portions of Texas and Oklahoma highway.

The film is pretty to look at, and it’s easy to see the DNA of a directing style that would eventually win Bigelow a ton of awards for The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

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Critics liked Near Dark, and as I already mentioned, it became a cult classic. In some ways, I can see why. The idea itself was an interesting take on both vampire movies and neo-westerns, and at times it delighted in its own violent mayhem. It also featured a synth soundtrack by Tangerine Dream that had some great moments.

However, overall, this one was just too nonsensical in all the wrong ways for me. The writing and story just didn’t hold together at all. It was erratic and silly, but to me it didn’t seem to be so intentionally. Everyone has the sorts of holes and weaknesses that prohibit enjoyment, and Near Dark had too many for me.

If anyone wants to have a specific conversation about what didn’t work for me in Near Dark, I’m game. I just didn’t want to go on and on bitching about it in this post. That’s just not what I want RtM to be. I’m also totally down if someone who loves this movie wants to enlighten me concerning its virtues. I would genuinely enjoy learning to see it through a fan’s eyes.

Will I Ever Watch It Again? No. There’s definitely something I’m missing. It’s got a big following of folks who love it and rewatch it, so I’ll leave them to it.