Horror Queen

A “true” story.

PLOT

Erin is a lawyer who decides to defend Father Moore when he’s accused of murder after a woman named Emily Rose died during an exorcism. During the courtroom battle, the prosecution states that the girl had psychosis and needed medical help, while Erin claims her family tried to help her in different ways. The movie then flashes back to the problems suffered by Emily such as smelling weird things, seeing things try to kill her and seeing the general signs of a haunting like things moving around her. She does get help, but when it doesn’t work, she goes home and things get worse. As Erin keeps working the case, she experiences the same things as Emily and learns that she may now be the one the demons want.

TRIVIA

Based in part on the story of Annelise Michel, a young girl many believe was possessed by demons during the 1970s.

THOUGHTS

I actually watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose again recently because my boyfriend never saw it and Wal-Mart had it cheap. I own a copy somewhere, but it mysteriously disappeared during my recent move (maybe the demons didn’t want me to see it?). I think this is a really good movie, but it’s not really a horror movie. It’s constantly named on best lists, but it’s more of a thriller or maybe a drama than a traditional horror movie. I also have to say that the movie is a little too long for me; my attention span isn’t what it used to be and I can’t sit still for over two hours.

I just picked up the first season of “Fear, Itself” because I only managed to watch a few episodes when it was on last summer. Based on reviews and ratings, I think the show probably won’t be around for a second season, but I could be wrong. So far it seems like a network/broadcast version of Masters of Horror, but it’s not all bad. I plan on reviewing the episodes as I watch them, but I’m not watching them in order at all. I also won’t be posting them one right after the other, but spacing them out among horror movie reviews. Look for a whole bunch over the next month or two.

Not as good as I remembered.

PLOT

Rose and Christopher start worrying when their adopted daughter Sharon starts sleepwalking and having nightmares, during which she screams Silent Hill. Rose decides to take Sharon back to the town and her husband disagrees, even cutting off her credit cards to stop her. She runs into a local cop thinks Rose took the child from someone else and chases her into town. Rose swerves to miss hitting a kid in the road and is knocked unconscious, only to wake up and find that Sharon is gone. While looking for her daughter, she runs across weird creatures and a woman who tells her that Sharon is actually her dead daughter Alessa. The more Rose gets drawn into the town, the more she realizes that the woman might be telling the truth.

TRIVIA

Based on the first four Silent Hill video games, with the latest game Silent Hill: Homecoming featuring elements from the movie.

The original storyline didn’t include the father character, but was added to make the studio happy because they didn’t believe a prominently female movie would sell.

Two more movies are in the works.

THOUGHTS

I originally saw Silent Hill in the theaters and remember feeling fairly disappointed. I saw it again recently because so many people had such a high opinion of it and I have to say that I still feel the same way. There’s something about the movie that puts me off, but I can’t think of exactly what it is. At first the movie is good, but then after some time in Silent Hill, it starts falling off. I thought the movie seemed a little too long and also kind of boring at times. It did make me pull out my Silent Hill game again and play it, but that’s all it did.

Not as bad as you’ve heard.

PLOT

Travis is celebrating finishing up his thesis movie for film school and drinking with his friend Lisa. When he leaves for the night, someone slips her a drugged drink and she ends up killed, after having her liver removed. The movie then jumps to Amy, a legacy at the school who meets a security guard who just happens to have survived the first movie. She decides to use the woman’s experiences and make a horror movie. As work starts, another friend is killed and Amy learns that Travis killed himself after getting a bad grade on his film. She then meets his twin Trevor and discovers that Travis may have been murdered. Quickly Amy realizes that Travis’s death and the deaths going on around her are somehow connected.

TRIVIA

Actually filmed on a real college campus in Canada.

THOUGHTS

I really like two things about this movie. (1) They brought back Loretta Devine who is fantastic as a security guard who wishes she was Foxy Brown and (2) they used Rebecca Gayhart at the end, to even further connect the two movies. I just wish they had kept that storyline going, rather than doing what they did with the urban legend name. I do kind of like Urban Legends Final Cut and I like the idea of the movie school playing a main role. I know a lot of people hated it and I don’t think it deserves some of the reviews it got.

What can you say about a remake?

PLOT

Nick is a local man, working on a fishing boat and sleeping with Stevie Wayne, the sexy DJ who owns the only radio station that reaches residents of a small island. When his girlfriend Elizabeth comes back to town, he tries to hide his recent actions from her and go back to things as normal. Something isn’t normal though, and the residents discover that when bodies start turning up after a mysterious fog sweeps through town. Elizabeth starts researching the town’s history and discovers the dark truth of the town founders. The founders murdered a ship full of men and kept it hidden, but now the ghosts of those men want their revenge.

TRIVIA

A kind of/sort of remake of the John Carpenter movie The Fog.

THOUGHTS

I never bothered to see this movie because the reviews were so bad, but when I saw it for $2, I couldn’t resist picking it up. Now I’m almost sad that I wasted the time. The only good thing about the movie is Selma Blair as Stevie. She’s so great and Maggie Grace is so bad as Elizabeth that you wonder why anyone would pick her over Stevie. The acting here is pretty bad too, with most actors just sleepwalking through their roles and acting like wooden dolls. I expect to see this in a low-budget, straight to DVD release and not a wide-spread horror movie.

Brittany Murphy as a virgin?

PLOT

Jesse Bradford and his girlfriend are making out when they’re both killed. Jody, the sheriff’s daughter, turns her boyfriend down for sex that same night and he dumps her. Her dad discovers that the killer went after the couple because they were both virgins and his daughter turns to the school English teacher (played by Jay Mohr of all people) for support. As more kids start dying and the victims are more virgins, the teens decide that sex is the only way to keep themselves safe. Jody herself has more to deal with when she learns that her dad and some other men in town have their own secret and it relates to the killer.

TRIVIA

Ted Levine was an early choice to play the sheriff in Cherry Falls.

The original version of Cherry Falls was much bloodier and gorier, but was significantly cut to fit the MPAA standards.

THOUGHTS

After learning about the earlier version of Cherry Falls, I’d love to see that one. There are so many gory movies out there that I can’t believe the MPAA had such a problem with this one, given that I found it pretty tame. At the same time though, I love the premise! The idea of a serial killer going after virgins is unique and something that I’ve never seen in a movie before; I’m a little surprised that no one hasn’t “stolen” the idea since then. Cherry Falls isn’t my favorite movie and I don’t think it’s great, but I do like it.

Fairly cheesy.

PLOT

John Ritter stars as a real estate agent taking a young couple (half of which is David DeLuise) around a special tract of houses, all of which have a horror story attached. After showing them a seemingly gorgeous house, he then tells them what happened there and the movie launches into a new story. One story surrounds a woman and her boyfriend killing her husband, another focuses on a man fighting with a monkey his daughter brings home and the last story is about a psychiatrist and her patient, who may be a killer. The movie jumps back to John Ritter and it turns out that he might just have a special reason for selling more houses….

TRIVIA

John Ritter also starred in Bride of Chucky before his untimely death.

THOUGHTS

I have this movie on a disc with tomorrow’s review Cherry Falls, but I really didn’t remember it. There’s so many people in here that you recognize from other places like Will Estes and Brenda Strong, plus a guy now on “CSI New York”. That said, Terror Tract isn’t a very good movie, but there’s something about it that I actually like. The best story is probably the third one, even though I didn’t make it sound very good. Watching the dad from “Malcolm in the Middle” run around chasing a killer monkey was a nice treat and it has a great ending that wraps up the movie in a nice way, which you don’t always find in anthologies. So yes, I actually like Terror Tract, but you’ll probably hate it.

I like it.

PLOT

Malcolm Rivers is a convicted serial killer who killed several people in a motel, but his doctor found his journal and thinks he knows what happened. The doctor calls for a meeting among the lawyers and judge one night and as they meet, the movie switches to a group of ten people who all find themselves in the middle of Nevada at the same hotel. The guests include a former cop, current cop, convict, ex-prostitute, famous actress, a newlywed couple, a family and a hotel worker with a shady past. The first body appears with the Room 10 key and slowly people start dying, each one leaving behind a room key. The group has to learn what they have in common before they all end up dead.

TRIVIA

Many actors appeared in other horror movies such as John Cusak (1408) and Jake Busey (Hitcher 2, Death Row).

THOUGHTS

I was a little leery of watching Identity because I had such good memories of it and I didn’t think it would hold up well so I was pleasantly surprised when I watched it and still liked it. A lot of people don’t like the ending of the movie or how all the people are connected, but I think it’s a little different and different is good. Identity isn’t your typical horror movie because you really have to follow along to get it. And okay, a big part of why I like it is because it features John Hawkes in a starring role and I just love that guy…

Typical.

PLOT

A girl secretly meets her boyfriend and they talk about how they’re getting married when she turns 18. She tells her father about it and he kills her a few minutes later, declaring that he doesn’t want the darkness to get her. The movie then switches to Molly Hartley, who is 17 and attending a new school. Her psychotic mother stabbed her with scissors and she and her father are trying to put their lives back together while her mom is locked up. She makes friends with another student and even gets a quasai boyfriend Joseph. She starts seeing weird things and hearing things, which makes her think that she’s psychotic like her mom. Slowly she realizes that there is something else going on and it’s all connected to her mom.

TRIVIA

Several of the actors appear on CW shows, with two actresses playing friends on “Beverly Hills 90210”.

THOUGHTS

I can’t believe I sat through this movie, nor can I believe that a friend who borrowed it thought it was “pretty cool”. I thought it was fairly lame and that’s being polite. About the only thing I liked in the movie was the end because it featured the bad buy winning, which unfortunately we don’t see happen a lot. Other than that, I can’t say a whole lot of good things about the movie. The Haunting of Molly Hartley had the feel of a straight to DVD movie, but had a theatrical release.

Not too bad.

PLOT

The British Army rolls through a small town doing everything you’d expect from a zombie flick before the movie starts its different parts. A group of news people head to the country in the hopes of finding information relating to a deadly virus sweeping England. The rest of the movie relates to different groups of people and how they survive the outbreak, such as the survivors who shoot the infected without a second thought, children included. Slowly the movie reveals what happened to the original people and how the greater threat might not be the infected.

TRIVIA

Shot entirely on handheld video.

Released in America by Dimension Extreme.

THOUGHTS

Wal-Mart got me early this year because I found this one relatively cheap on their shelves and bought it without knowing anything about it. The shooting quality had me cringing at first, but as I got caught up in the story, I stopped noticing it. This is one of those great little horror movies that keep you thinking for a few days later, especially when the people experience more trouble and violence from other survivors than the infected zombies. If you haven’t seen Zombie Diaries, I recommend it, but I probably wouldn’t buy a copy unless you find it really cheap.