HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Boy (2016)

The Walking Dead's Lauren Cohan stars as American nanny Greta who, escaping an abusive relationship, comes to the UK to take up a job offer to care for a young boy in a remote English village.

Arriving at the parents' isolated mansion, Greta realises that her wealthy employers might be a bit batty as their eight-year-old son, Brahms, is actually a life-sized doll that she is tasked with caring for as though he is real.

The Heelshires (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle) present Greta with a list of rules that she must follow to ensure that all Brahms' needs are taken into account.

As soon Greta agrees to take the job, the Heelshires declare they are going on holiday and leave the young American alone with the doll.

At first, she treats the whole thing as a joke, and an easy way to make money, but when she fails to follow the list of instructions increasingly weird things start happening (strange noises, footsteps outside her room, disappearing items of clothing and jewellery etc).

Her only human contact is with village grocer Malcolm (Rupert Evans), who makes regular deliveries to the house and takes an instant shine to Greta (because Lauren Cohan!).

He explains that the real Brahms died in a fire 20 years earlier and since then the elderly couple have only been able to process their loss through the doll.

Quite quickly, Greta convinces herself that the doll is actually alive, or possessed by a ghost, and even manages to prove it to Malcolm (thus also proving to herself that she's not going mad).

But then, whether out of fear of what she believes she has stumbled upon or genuine dedication to the doll-boy, Greta becomes as obsessed as the Heelshires were in following Brahms' rules.

If you can surrender yourself to the slow build-up - and the general creepiness of the doll - The Boy is a powerfully effective, and quite old school, horror flick as well as a surprisingly intelligent and novel psychological thriller.

Things start to go quite batshit crazy in the third act - after Greta's brutish ex-boyfriend (Ben Robson) makes an appearance - but the key thing, and quite a rarity in a lot of modern horror movies, is everything makes sense if you take a moment to think about it.

The film overdoes the "and she wakes up from her nightmare" gimmick a couple of times, but doesn't ladle on the cheap jumpscares that tend to plague the genre these days, instead relying primarily on the weird atmosphere that Stacey Menear's script and William Brent Bell's direction have crafted.

A movie where the less you know about the plot the better, for good measure, The Boy throws in some red herrings along the way, ultimately building up to a genuinely surprising, yet wholly logical, clever and satisfying, climax.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Amazonia - The Catherine Miles Story (1985)

Let's get one thing cleared up straight away, Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story (aka White Slave aka Schiave bianche - Violenza in Amazzonia aka Cannibal Holocaust II) is not a well-made or well-acted film.

As an homage to the work of his fellow Italian filmmakers Rugero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi - genre movie makers of the '70s and '80s - Mario Gariazzo (as Roy Garrett) concocted the faux "true story" of an 18-year-old Westerner taken prisoner by an an indigenous tribe of headhunters when her parents are butchered on a family boat trip in the Amazon.

Delivered through the framing device of Catherine's trial for murder - once she's back in 'civilization' - the story is narrated by the titular Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) in flashback.

In a classic example of Stockholm Syndrome, during her lengthy imprisonment in the jungle, Catherine finds herself falling for the headhunter, Umukai (Will Gonzales), that she blames for her parents' death, but then uses that to ultimately exact revenge on those responsible.

Although 'inspired' by cannibal exploitation movies, there's a disappointing lack of actual cinematic cannibalism in Amazonia; the only mention of it comes from a brief interaction with a neighbouring tribe that we are told practices the eating of human flesh.

Instead, while playing up the 'romance' angle (dig the funky music), the film tries hard to be almost educational, with Catherine often 'educating' the court proceedings with National Geographic-style nuggets of information about the lifestyle of the indigenous population.

There are a handful of moments of cheesy violence, splattered with unconvincing bright red blood and cheap practical effects, and while thankfully devoid of the grim real life slaughter of animals by humans (as happened in the original sickening Cannibal Holocaust) there are a couple of gratuitously random 'nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw' shots of a leopard attacking its prey.

There are also a couple of uncomfortable scenes of threatened sexual violence.

Make no mistake, this is grindhouse sleaze (although largely tame compared to cinema's modern excesses) of the lowest kind, peppering a forgettable script with fake blood and plenty of real nudity, selling itself as a 'cannibal horror film' yet devoid of cannibalism.

However, what almost redeems Amazonia is the plot twist that comes in about two-thirds of the way through the 90-minute movie and answers a major question observant audience members should have been asking.

In a better film, that could have done this revelation justice, the final act of Catherine's narrative would have had more impact.

It's almost as if there actually was a good idea in there, but it got buried under the limitations of 1980's Italian low-budget filmmaking and  Gariazzo's desire to make an exploitation flick in the style of his idols.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Black Phone (2021)

Already a regular target of bullies, shy-but-smart, 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames) is snatched off the streets of 1978 Denver by the local bogeyman, a masked sicko known as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke).

Locked up in the basement of sadistic, serial child-killer's home, Finney starts to get messages on a disconnected, old black telephone from the ghosts of The Grabber's previous victims.

Meanwhile, his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is having vivid dreams about The Grabber's victims, including details not released to the general public, which piques the interest of the police.

As the ghosts on the phone guide Finney into trying to complete their own escape attempts, Gwen - against the wishes of their alcoholic and abusive father, Terrance (Jeremy Davies) - tries to piece together clues to her brother's location.

With its '70s suburban setting, psychic kids, ghosts, and creepy and enigmatic antagonist, writer/director Scott Derrickson's The Black Phone has an immediate, overpowering Stephen King vibe about it... which is unsurprising as it's based on a short story of the same name by King's son, Joe Hill.

Unfortunately, for all its intensity and jeopardy, there's little depth to the story. While The Black Phone is incredibly well-made, but it simply lacks any enduring substance or character depth.

Sure, it's suggested that Gwen got her "abilities" from her mum (who had been driven to suicide by her own visions) and presumably that's also why Finney could hear the black phone "ringing", but that's about it.

Some of the hardest moments to watch don't actually involve The Grabber, who by and large (for what we actually see) is all talk, but are, instead, of the inexcusably violent Terrance beating on Gwen for attracting the attention of the police because of her dreams!

Then, much of the film's resolution hinges on the police's immediate willingness to act on Gwen's dreams, which - given the apparent "true crime" grittiness that Scott Derrickson (of Sinister and Doctor Strange fame) seems to be chasing here - feels rather far-fetched.

But it was the 70's, I guess, perhaps the Denver police were more open to pursuing leads from the dreams of tween girls?

In truth, throughout the 100-minute movie, the paranormal aspects are treated in a very matter-of-fact manner, as if psychic kids and ghosts were an accepted part of real life in 1970's suburban America, rather than the stuff of nightmares and horror flicks.

Nevertheless, The Black Phone is a powerful and engaging thriller, with a disturbing and memorable central performance from Ethan Hawke in a variety of Tom Savini-designed masks, that bear more than a passing resemblance to Lon Chaney's iconic character from the legendary, lost, silent horror movie London After Midnight.

However, while The Black Phone understandably unnerves its audience with a constant sense of threat towards its young captive lead, this ultimately feels very superficial.

Even the pseudo-bait-and-switch, Silence of The Lambs-inspired, arrival of the cavalry at the end isn't the giant misdirect you fear it might have been, that could have opened the plot up for a potentially darker denouement.

For all its supernatural trappings, The Black Phone is disappointingly linear, devoid of any interesting twists or revelations at the eleventh hour. 

Ultimately, while there's definitely the essence of a potentially great horror movie in what has been brought to the screen, you are left with the distinct feeling that there could have been so much more to The Black Phone.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Hagazussa (2017)

Imagine David Lynch remade The Witch, but set it in 15th Century Austria and you might have some idea of what to expect from the totally weird Hagazussa.

For the first half-hour of this glacially-paced movie young Albrun (Celina Peter) nurses her sickly mother Martha (Claudia Martini), who is seemingly dying of the plague, in an isolated shack up in the snowy Alps.

Then the story jumps forward in time and Albrun is all grown-up (Aleksandra Cwen), a full-time goat-herder with a child of her own (Gerdi Marlen Simonn) to care for, although there is no sign of the father.

Shot with a Lynchian obsession for misty landscapes, wind through tree branches, and extreme close-ups of nature, Hagazussa is unrelentingly grim, atmospheric, folk horror.

Just when you think the story can't get any darker, it goes there.

Major kudos to Aleksandra Cwen who pretty much carries the bulk of the movie on her own - with the aid of her amazingly expressive eyes, which writer/director Lukas Feigelfeld makes great use of when the subject matter crosses that line where suggestion is the only way to go.

Like The Head Hunter, there is minimal (German) dialogue (with English subtitles), so it's left largely to the viewer to piece together a narrative that suits the visuals.

Albrun and her mother have been shunned by the nearby community as "witches", but with the intervention of the local priest, Albrun is befriended by local woman Swinda (Tanja Petrovskij).

However, this takes an unexpectedly unpleasant turn.

Now, my reading of what I witnessed in Hagazussa is that the plague that then comes to the community is Albrun's revenge, but the ultra-grim events that follow are the price she has to pay for the black magic.

The multiple taboo-busting, potentially triggering, nastiness that unfolds in the final third of the 102-minute film makes The Witch look like a Carry On film in comparison.

This certainly isn't a movie for those who think jump scares are the height of horror movie craftsmanship or embrace frenetic slasher flicks as the "one true way" for the genre.

Playing heavily with the paranoia of isolation, as well as Lovecraftian fear of the unknown heightened by religious indoctrination,  Hagazussa is unnerving and horrific, rather than frightening.

You're more likely to feel a bit nauseous than scared. 

This is art house horror, plunging deeper and deeper into the dark pit of the human soul on a more cerebral than visceral level (not that that there isn't viscera on display!).

Hagazussa takes the idea of the "slow burn" to excruciating new lengths, but definitely gets under your skin if you're willing to surrender yourself to it.

Right up until the final moment. Then, bizarrely, taking a leaf out of low-budget '80s fantasy, everything randomly ends in inexplicable fire.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Pleasant Dreams!

Back in 2015, Rodney Ascher, director of the controversial documentary Room 237 about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, released his documentary, The Nightmare, about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis.

Now this is something I have experience of.

Despite my love of all things horror-orientated (monsters, cannibals, ghosts etc), when it comes to real life I'm not so brave, so as we are fast approaching Halloween I thought it would be time to share my own 'horror movie' experience:

Way back in 2002 I went to visit Paul when he was working for an English-language newspaper in Beijing, China.

He was staying in a big, one-bedroom flat in a tall tower block, so I was sleeping on a makeshift (but comfortable) bed in his lounge.

Alcohol usually played a large part in making sure I had a good night's sleep... but one night I awoke with an "invisible person" sitting on my chest; pinning me down. I couldn't move!

I have no recollection of what happened later but talking to Paul the next day I discovered I wasn't the first person this had happened to. There was the usual urban myth circulating about someone jumping to their death from one of the flats... but no-one could ever say which one.

Later I read about 'sleep paralysis', which (basically) means your mind has woken up but your body is still asleep, so you can see and think - but not move; but at the time I was as convinced as I've ever been that I had come face-to-invisible-face with a ghost!!!

From Wikipedia:

In Chinese folk culture, sleep paralysis is referred as "gui yà chúang" (鬼压床), literally: "Ghost press bed": 鬼: ghost, 压: press, 床: bed. The belief is that a spirit or ghost is sitting or lying on top of the individual while they were sleeping, causing the sleep paralysis. This is thought to be a minor body possession by the forces from the dead, and usually doesn't cause any harm to the victim.

SAW WEEK: Spiral - From The Book of Saw (2021)

 

Taking a leaf from the original Saw movie, Spiral is primarily a gruesome police procedural, but here we have a Jigsaw "copycat" killer taking out corrupt members of a city police force.

While not a target for any of his traps per se, the killer seems to have a special interest in the department's one good cop, a hilariously over-the-top, almost parody of the lone wolf stereotype, Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock).

There are definitely moments when the dialogue and actions of characters - and not just Rock's Zeke - are so wild and melodramatic - while hammering home perceived clichés of the Mel Gibson/Lethal Weapon-style of renegade cop who always gets the job done, no matter the cost - that Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger's script plays like a send-up of the genre.

After one "off-the-books" solo mission too many, Zeke's boss, Captain Angie Garza (Riverdale's Marisol Nichols) insists he partner up with rookie detective William Schenk (The Handmaid's Tale's Max Minghella) when a call comes in to investigate the death of an apparent homeless person in the subway.

If only Zeke had been days away from retirement, Spiral would have ticked every cliché on the genre bingo card. In fact, I'm slightly disappointed that neither he nor his dad said: "I'm getting too old for this shit!"

Zeke's father - the former police chief Marcus Banks (Samuel L Jackson) - mysteriously disappears before he is able to discuss the case with his son, causing the already stressed Zeke additional concern.

We are treated to some glorious flashbacks of Jackson sporting a wonky fake moustache that just made me giggle childishly.

However, the exaggerated police drama is balanced against the bloody "tests" that the killer puts their victims in. 

While they seemingly abide by John Kramer's rules that the person must have a chance of escape, the chances appear to be very thin... and failure results in a bloody mess for the police to pick through.

Honestly, you don't have to be a detective to figure out the identity of the killer if you pay attention to the way some scenes are shot and how one particular murder is handled, but the confirmation of their true name in the final act is when the film truly comes into its own.

Actually, the concluding scenes of Spiral save the film, retroactively explaining some moments from earlier in the narrative (as Saw movies are won to do), but, as with the later films in the original Saw franchise, this killer simply isn't as original or layered as John Kramer (the original Jigsaw).

I think I was expecting a very modern reimagining of the Saw franchise, but - despite the big names and presumably bigger budget - Spiral ultimately plays out like just another by-the-book entry in the franchise.

But I guess the clue was in the title.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Head Hunter (2018)

When your flaming torch-carrying protagonist is wading through a claustrophobic, waterlogged, subterranean labyrinth in pursuit of a reanimated monster he has killed once already, you've pretty much reached peak Dungeons & Dragons.

Gorgeously shot in Portugal with a budget of around $30,000, The Head Hunter is a mix of character study and horror flick, with so little dialogue it's almost a silent movie.

Carrying the entirety of the action on his shoulders, Christopher Rygh is phenomenal as the main character, the titular "head hunter", Dagg, a grizzled, veteran, monster-slaying bounty hunter.

A film of two halves, the first part of the 73-minute movie examines the head hunter's day-to-day life in his isolated cabin on the edge of the kingdom,

Rather than focusing on the monster slaying (which always occurs off-screen), it instead establishes his routines and then deals with the immediate aftermath of each combat, coping with injuries, recycling parts of slain monsters as potions and salves etc.

As Dagg's wall of trophy heads grow, there is always one missing: the head of the creature that killed his daughter (Cora Kaufman) years earlier.

But then a trumpet summons comes from the nearby castle, the monster has been seen, and the head hunter sets out to wreak his vengeance.

The film is peppered with beautiful world-building details, such as the way the largely unseen inhabitants of the castle communicate with the head hunter - suggesting they are probably as scared of him as they are of the monsters they send him after.

The second half of the film deals with Dagg's confrontation with this final beast. He kills it and brings its head back to his home to mount it on his wall, but things don't go according to plan.

The Head Hunter (aka Viking Vengeance) demands a lot from its audience, but investment and observation are richly rewarded.

The set-up may seem slow, but writer-director Jordan Downey's script (co-written with Kevin Stewart) is incredibly tight, with measured pacing that sets-up and foreshadows every twist, right to the marvellously nihilistic ending.

Superficially, The Head Hunter may present itself as just another small Viking/sword-and-sorcery film, but it's really unlike anything else.

With its primary emphasis on the more mundane aspects of Dagg's brutal career, lack of expositional dialogue, and reliance on horror movie tropes when dealing with the final monster, The Head Hunter is quite unique.

From the costuming to the set-dressing, for such a low-budget flick, the mise en scène is incredible, creating a wholly believable world for Dagg to exist in, while the beautiful, unpopulated vistas that he travels through are pure fantasy RPG territory.

With its vivid dream-like nature, The Head Hunter is compelling, intriguing, exciting, and heart-breaking.

If you're willing to open yourself up to it, it's not a film you're going to quickly forget.

SAW WEEK: Jigsaw (2017)

It's seven years since the last Saw movie was released (Saw: The Final Chapter) and, in the universe of the franchise, a decade since John Kramer (Tobin Bell) died... but his 'games' appear to have begun again.

Once bodies start appearing, bearing the hallmarks of Jigsaw victims, hardboiled detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and his new partner, Keith Hunt (Clé Bennett) refuse to believe that Kramer has risen from the grave, even though the forensics are pointing them in that direction.

Instead their suspicions fall closer to home when they start to look at pathologists Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore), a widower and single parent suffering PTSD, and Eleanor Bonneville (Hannah Emily Anderson), an adrenalin junkie with a sick obsession with the original Jigsaw murders.

Meanwhile, five people are being put through a series of life-threatening "games" in an isolated farm location, distinct from the usual urban settings of the previous franchise entries.

However, when they fail, their corpses turn up in public places around the city for Halloran and Hunt to find.

Jigsaw definitely leans more towards the original police procedural approach to the mystery of who is committing the crimes.

Yet, while the film throws us a few curveballs, it doesn't really do a good enough job of obfuscating the trap-setter's true identity.

Once you've figured this out early on you spend the rest of film mentally batting away the red herrings that try to drag you in a different direction.

Also, come the final act, one of the protagonists - the closest the film comes to having a hero, you may have thought - simply disappears from the action completely.

Genuinely atmospheric and the first of the franchise since the original to look really cinematic rather than like a blood-spattered  TV show, Jigsaw has a more contemporary veneer than the mid-franchise sequels.

Conversely, the traps - while elaborate - have a grittier, and less extravagant, feel to them, probably because of the rustic locale they have been constructed in.

The script, by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, is solid, and, as is common with this franchise, messes around with the concept of non-linear narrative, twisting the plotlines into a complex bundle that even fills in more 'blanks' in John Kramer's very industrious backstory.

I'll confess I love the way everything meshes together across all the movies, making them, in essence, one single narrative.

It does appear though that from the moment Kramer learned of his cancer diagnosis, he started building an array of massive "games" around the area, without anyone noticing, and recruiting several loyal acolytes to assist him... none of whom gave even a hint to anyone else they were involved in these massive undertakings.

Which, again, brings me back to the inescapable conclusion that polymath (engineer/architect/philosopher etc) John Kramer - aka Jigsaw - would have made an incredible Batman villain, from the panache he brings to building deathtraps and his ability to attract devoted henchmen to the way his 'games' continue to unfold 10 years after his death.

In fact, by this stage of this non-supernatural horror franchise, you're almost convinced that if anyone could find a convincing way to return from the dead it would John Kramer.

I purchased the eight Saw movies as a 'box set' bargain in the Sky Store, for just £20, and while wading through some of the middle-period - more 'torture porny - sequels I started to wonder what I had let myself in for.

But, by the end of Jigsaw, my interest was definitely piqued by the prospect of seeing Spiral: From The Book of Saw.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Witch (2015)

Robert Eggers' The Witch: A New England Folktale is a masterpiece of engrossing storytelling, a rare intelligent horror film that relies on character and atmosphere rather than cheap jump scares and excessive gore.

In New England of 1630, farmer William (gravelly-voiced Ralph Ineson) is exiled from his village for his particular interpretation of the Christian religion, and takes his family to live in an isolated farmstead on the edge of a creepy forest.

He and his wife, Katherine (Game Of Thrones' Kate Dickie), ban their children from going into the forest, telling them they must stay within the boundary of the farm.

One day, their teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is playing peek-a-boo with the family's newest arrival, baby Samuel (Axtun Henry Dube/Athan Conrad Dube) when the newborn suddenly disappears... and the family's real troubles begin.

William claims the child was taken by a wolf, but increasingly the family come to believe it was the work of witchcraft.

The Witch can be seen as a metaphor for the current problems in America, something unknown strikes at the heart of the devout family, then retreats back into the woods and watches the flames of paranoia engulf the insular community, occasionally fanning the fire from its hiding place in the trees.

Much of the horror, in fact, comes from the religious intolerance  at the core of the family's fundamental beliefs; in a very real sense they make their own fear by cultivating brutal ideas about eternal damnation, sins of the flesh etc that confuse and terrify the younger members of the family.

The family does more to tear itself apart than the overt actions of whatever is in the woods.

It is easy to see from this how such shocking events as the Salem Witch Trials could come about, with random (but ultimately explicable) events and misspoke words (taken at face value) ultimately leading to burning people at the stake.

As William's family try to move on from the loss of Samuel, good intentions turn to disasters. Then we find ourselves questioning the initial motivations of these deeds and we have to wonder how much of their situation arises from William's own pride and hypocrisy?

By no stretch of the imagination is The Witch a mainstream schlock horrorfest. If you thought The Boy was a slow-burner, then this is positively glacial by comparison (even though the first 'incident' happens within the opening ten minutes), but it all helps build the tension and draw you in.

So dismal is the family's world that much of the time it looks almost like a black and white movie - which makes the odd moments of red all the more striking and important - and the script's period dialogue gets a bit mumbly at times (although not approaching the near-comical levels of Tom Hardy's character in The Revenant), but there is no missing the intent of what is being said, even if the odd sentence eludes you.

The acting from all concerned is incredible, accentuating the sense of verisimilitude that makes the events all the more believable.

To really get the most out of The Witch, you need to close the curtains, turn out the lights, turn off all your mobile devices, and allow yourself to sink into the stark 17th Century setting, focusing on the unfolding drama on the screen rather than whatever drama is unfolding in the Twitterverse.

Overall, the film is more a well-researched historical drama and psychological thriller than a blockbuster horror flick.

With period folklore shaping the 'supernatural' elements of the story, The Witch is worthy to stand alongside The Wicker Man, Blood On Satan's Claw and, even, The Blair Witch Project with its understated, but unnerving, approach to the genre that is absent many modern horror tropes.

Now I love a good monster movie as much as the next man, but I do wish there were more subtle and smart horror films like The Witch being made to balance out the genre's offerings.