by Joe X Young 

I started watching Demon Hunter and stopped 15 minutes into the film because I’m uncertain as to whether or not to have some aspirins on standby. You may not believe that relevant to the film, but the ludicrously high volume on totally unnecessary music is spoiling what began as a quite interesting horror film. 10 minutes further and again we have deafening music, now I understand that a lot of films have a heavy soundtrack, some have creepy music et cetera to enhance the mood, but when the music is so intrusive you can scarcely hear what the characters are saying it distracts from the enjoyment.

35 minute stage and I have conceded defeat.

Okay, it’s now four hours after watching 35 minutes of Demon Hunter and I still have the headache. I’ve not taken any aspirins as I’m not a fan of medication unless absolutely necessary, Demon Hunter was just so damned noisy that I almost succumbed.

In those four hours I have watched two other movies, one of which had hardly any music interspersed, but the other had quite a bit more than average yet still less than Demon Hunter. The soundtrack in the second film although generally present was not intrusive and I could still hear every word of dialogue perfectly well, which is what’s supposed to happen. I’m telling you this so that you can fully understand that it’s not just me having a bad day, as let’s face it, there are always times when we are a little more sensitive to noise than others. The other two movies were a test, to see if it was just me, it wasn’t.

I even recruited my fiancée to watch the first half-hour as a test. She said the same thing I have.

This is all very sad as Demon Hunter got off to a fairly good start, a little bit like a not so slick version of ‘Underworld’, and by the time my head was pounding the film was actually hitting some very good horror notes which made me progress as far as I did, but I’m so sorry ladies and gentlemen, I’m not going to compromise my health for a horror film and end up like some poor sod on ‘Scanners’.

I have no idea whatsoever regarding the motives of the sound editors, and I know I’m repeating myself, but WTF!

It’s a shame, it really is, as a lot of people clearly put a lot of effort into this and it looked like it might have been excellent but for the soundtrack.

Of course you can always choose to watch it anyway, but for me it’s one of those rare instances where I was forced to abandon the film.
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It’s available right now as video on demand from Wild Eye Releasing. Good luck!

BY JOE X YOUNG

 
From Uncork'd Entertainment and DeInstitutionalized comes Circus Kane. Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray directs a James Cullen Bressack and Zack Ward script, based on a story by Sean Sellars. Gerald Webb, Christopher Ray and James Cullen Bressack produce. Here’s the official blurb:

“The notorious and disgraced circus master, Balthazar Kane, invites an unsuspecting group of social media stars to the revival of his CIRCUS KANE by promising $250,000 to any of them who can make it through the night. Kane’s true plan quickly proves to be far more sinister as the contestants realize more than money is on the line. The group must fight for their lives to escape Kane’s demented house of horrors.”

Well, with that team behind it and that basic premise it looks promising.

It would appear that in these modern times one could not chuck a dart without hitting a killer clown movie, and for the most part they are total dross. Circus Kane has killer clowns, albeit mercifully used sparingly and to great effect.  There’s also the fiendish, top-hatted ringmaster required by every circus who is a joy to watch, and it has bucketloads of gore, a mansion full of booby-trapped rooms and diverse victims chosen to survive for a cash sum. This is where we could easily start yawning as we have seen all of these components in loads of other movies; however circus Kane is one of those rare instances where all of the run-of-the-mill clichés come together and actually work out pretty well.

One of the biggest problems in horror movies of this ilk is flat characterisation, it’s not enough to just have a bunch of victims, you really need to give a shit what happens to them and as such they need to be at the very least interesting enough via personality or looks. Most films coast on eye-candy, of which, depending on your preferences, there’s enough to satisfy with former ‘Miss Poland USA’ winner Victoria Konefal proving she’s not just a very pretty face. For the ladies there’s Jonathan Lipnicki (the little speccy blonde kid from Jerry Maguire) who has grown up all clean-cut handsome and buff. Circus Kane doesn’t rely on good looking actors though, choosing instead to have solid performances from believable even if not likeable characters. I say ‘if not likeable’ because one or two are somewhat self-serving whilst another, ‘Big Ed’ played by the hilarious Ted Monte, is a complete and utter arsehole, which is great as he is so generally obnoxious and funny that I was rooting for him to survive.

The eight ‘contestants’ (for want of a better word) are all chosen because of their links to the horror community, A Scream Queen, a memorabilia trader, a reviewer, a blogger, a collector et cetera, all with some way of promoting Circus Kane far and wide as the scariest experience ever.

Now this may seem a little far-fetched, the booby-trapped mansion idea and so on, yet at the time of writing this there are several such places in America offering what can best be described as a fully immersive torture porn experience requiring a full physical and mental medical and the signing of a waiver with an ‘anything goes’ policy. That really only makes the basis of Circus Kane even more plausible, otherwise the premise might have been off-putting as it would be unlikely that anyone would sign up for that no matter how much money was involved. Having real-life counterparts proves the lengths that some people go to even if only for the kudos of lasting longer than anyone else in degrading and dangerous scenarios. Circus Kane doesn’t go for dangerous it goes for deadly with the unlucky contestants searching for clues and performing tasks which lead to elimination in a variety of very nasty ways.

There are so many similar films out there, but this one manages to effortlessly float above them as the cast are excellent, production values are spot-on and it never gets tiresome.

It’s currently available as a VOD and maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t, but I loved it and it will definitely stand up to another viewing.

Follow the trailer below to see a little of the gory delights in store.

BY JOE X YOUNG 

 In an attempt to broaden my horizons I thought I would give Clowntergeist a view, obviously there’s a spate of movies with names such as Sharknado, Zombeavers and Piranhaconda  which the titles alone would suggest were created with the tongue wedged firmly in the cheek, so I made the incorrect assumption that perhaps this was a comedy horror. Clowntergeist was not best choice for my horizon broadening as it soon became apparent that this was neither a comedy or indeed a horror and was barely scraping by as a thriller.

The psychopathic clown had all of the presence of a limp dick at a porn shoot, and yes, I know, we’re kinda sorta basking in the glow of Pennywise who obviously sets a high bar, but ‘Ribcage’ (Eric Corbin) doesn’t even compare favourably with any of the few dozen killer clowns I’ve seen so far.  The only thing he brings to the table is a huge Turkey.

The dialogue is dreadful as in this example:

Woman: “What’s the curfew for?”
Jonah: “A manhunt”
One of the other customers then says to his companion “What’s a manhunt?”

Really? I know society seems to have dumbed down a lot lately, but when a guy who appears to be in his mid-20s has to ask what a manhunt is I think we are in serious trouble. That scenario came about after a Police Officer entered a soda shop and asked the temporary manager Jonah (Sean Patrick Murray) to close as soon as possible and inform everyone there is an 11 o’clock curfew. I’m questioning the logic on this, as surely it would be better for the Police Officer to have announced the curfew himself, what with him being your general-purpose authority figure and all that, but hey, the stupidity doesn’t end there. Remember what I just wrote about the store having to close? Couple of minutes after telling the customers they are closing in 10 minutes the same guy when asked by a staff member if they will remain closed the next day replies, and I quote…

“Not when I’m in charge… WE don’t close for the Apocalypse”.

Erm, okay, but didn’t he just say they were… CLOSING?!
He then gives the same staff member a set of keys and instructs her to close up the shop. Maybe I am too strict over this sort of thing but in my world that just doesn’t compute, which unfortunately is the case with most of what happens in this complete dog’s breakfast of a film. The only good thing in Clowntergeist is what comes across as a genuine rapport between the two female leads, Emma (Brittany Belland) and Heather (Monica Baker) who deserve a much better script in a much better film than this one.

The plot is a by the numbers thing relying mainly on jump scares delivered for the most part by a piss-poor supernatural clown, who walks like an ape with severe constipation carrying an imaginary roll of carpet under one arm as he thuds about in the shadows. The lighting, colour and music are good though as they do give a decent atmosphere, but not enough to elevate this film beyond the mundane.
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Of course this is just my opinion, so feel free to watch it if you absolutely must, but with the several dozen other clown-based horror films available to choose from I’d watch all of those first.

BY WILLIAM TEA 

​Michael McDowell remains something of a cult figure today, despite authoring some of the best novels to come out of the 1980s horror paperback boom and having a successful career as a Hollywood screenwriter (his filmography boasts such credits as Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas in addition to many episodes of anthology T.V. shows like Amazing Stories, Monsters, and Tales From The Darkside).

No less an authority than Stephen King described McDowell as one the finest writers to ever work in the genre, yet the man’s name has never attracted the same kind of attention or appreciation King’s has. It’s not a name your non-horror-reading friends are likely to recognize. McDowell is not a cottage industry. People don’t dress up as his characters for Halloween. Movies have not been made from his books.

At least, until now.

Shortening the title of one of McDowell’s best novels, Cold Moon Over Babylon, Cold Moon (which hits DVD and VOD this October) takes place in a quiet town along the Florida panhandle, a close-knit community teetering on the raggedy edge of the poverty line. When doe-eyed teenager Margaret Larkin washes up on the snake-infested banks of the river Styx, lashed to her bicycle and drowned in a shocking act of seemingly senseless murder, said community is shattered and, from beneath its broken shards, its most prominent residents’ darkest secrets come slithering out.

Something else comes slithering, too. Something pale-faced and drenched in sludge, seeking vengeance for the crimes perpetrated on the unquiet dead.

Full of chilling nightmare imagery, McDowell’s supernatural Southern Gothic is practically tailor-made for cinema. Though dominated by long stretches of suggestive terror and psychological dissolution, it knows when to pop the cork on all the tension it’s bottled up, bursting with garish, macabre gouts of all-out horror. Equally grimy and grim, McDowell’s black-haired, waterlogged ghosts would fit right in on the set of a J-horror spookshow. In theory, Cold Moon is a home run.

But what about in execution?

Director Griff Furst is probably the last person you’d expect to tackle this particular source material. His previous credits include such SyFy Channel-style CGI monster-mashes as Ghost Shark, Arachnoquake, and Alligator Alley (AKA Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators). On top of that, the cast list for Cold Moon includes that infamously ignominious ignoramus known as Tommy Wisseau. Y’know, the laughingstock “auteur” responsible for The Room? Yeah, that one. Upon hearing that alone, longtime McDowell readers would certainly be forgiven for letting their excitement over Cold Moon turn into trepidation.

Happily, there’s no need to fear. Not only has Furst delivered far and away his best directorial effort to date, but Wisseau’s presence is limited to a brief, wordless cameo. Hallelujah!

Sure, Cold Moon gets off to a rocky start. McDowell’s book is unusual in that it has little interest in maintaining the mystery of who its killer is, unmasking the culprit rather quickly so as to focus instead on the murderer’s piecemeal mental unraveling under the assault of angry spirits. As a result, the movie’s first act stumbles in its efforts to simultaneously appease audience expectations while also setting them up for imminent subversion. Once over that hump, though, Cold Moon zips along with nary a hitch. The first act may be a little shaky, but the second and third stand pretty damn solid, successfully keeping your eyes glued to the screen right up until the final credits roll.

A huge portion of that second and third-act magnetism comes thanks to actor Josh Stewart (best known to horror film fanatics as Arkin, the protagonist of those underrated Collector movies) who plays Nathan Redfield, a disturbed banker with a weakness for booze and jailbait. Even more than the ghosts who lurk in Babylon’s shadows, the look on Stewart’s face and the murky depths behind his eyes prove genuinely haunting.

Similarly worthy of praise are Frank Whaley (most famous as that burger-scarfin’ bullet-sponge Brett in Pulp Fiction), playing the out-of-his-depth sheriff Ted Hale, and Christopher Lloyd (don’t act like you don’t know who he is!), playing Nathan’s lecherous invalid father James. Much of the supporting cast is serviceable but forgettable, though that’s to be expected for a modestly budgeted production such as this.

Indeed, evidence of Cold Moon’s meager origins is readily apparent throughout. That doesn’t stop Furst from crafting an admirably effective atmosphere of melancholy dread, though. McDowell’s story and characters do a lot of the heavy lifting, but Furst himself deserves credit for realizing McDowell’s ominous and even grotesque apparitions so well, while also orchestrating plenty of spine-tingling scares of his own. Rounding out the package is an original score by the director’s brother, composer Nathan Furst, which imbues the proceedings with oodles of potent drama and emotion.
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All in all, Cold Moon isn’t quite the home run it could have been, but it is a damn good horror movie nonetheless. Dark, creepy, and ultimately tragic, it’s an adaptation that does its source material justice. Here’s hoping more Michael McDowell adaptations follow.

IT, the original TV mini-series, was my introduction to genuine horror. Up until that moment, I’m not even sure if I’d read any RL Stine, and because from my earliest infant memories I had always loved creepy and forbidden concepts, my excitement at finally seeing an adult horror film was hard to contain.

Being younger than 10, I wasn’t quite mature enough or equipped with a long enough attention span to enjoy the book, but some years later I read Stephen King’s almost endless novel, and loved it. Now, at 34, I’m currently revisiting the work, and it is even better than I remember it.

Re-reading the book makes IT (2017) a tough one to review, because the book is, quite simply, astounding. The characters have some of the best-drawn and most memorable personalities I’ve ever read. The atmosphere is awash with dread, and King’s (thankfully fictional) town of Derry feels haunted from the very start, as if something malign lurks beneath every innocent encounter, every landmark, and the most innocuous of events. Themes run through the tale like broken blood vessels: innocence being cut short, memories acting like hauntings, the disturbing transition from childhood into adulthood. The tightrope of overcoming or succumbing to that which frightens us most, and whether we allow our fears to shape our adult selves.

A film maker could hardly ask for stronger source material – or a more intimidating tale to translate into 4 hours of screen time.

Now, for anyone who doesn’t know, IT is about a town haunted by a malevolent, shape-changing presence which feasts on the fears and the flesh of those who believe in it – usually the local children. When this entity, which primarily takes the form of a clown, targets 7 close friends, they decide to fight back, and are forced to return to their home town 27 years later to finish the battle they started.

IT (2017) unravels the intertwined chronology of the novel and tells the children’s tale first, altering the time setting to the 80s rather than the 50s. For the most part, it works.

Let’s start with the good stuff: Pennywise was, for me, pretty goddamn great. Ignoring the wonderful ham of Tim Curry’s unforgettable performance in the flawed but fantastic 90s mini-series, Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise is a seriously unsettling interpretation of Derry’s eater of worlds, and of children. Skarsgard appears constantly on the brink of frenzy, delivering each line with hyper-intensity. Modern-day effects and budget are at their absolute best here, contorting the clown into a horrific array of different forms that are complemented by Skarsgard’s manic performance.

And the monsters.

Oh, the monsters!

Eddie’s leper, minus the unpleasant and thematically relevant proposition of oral sex featured in the book, is hideous.

Stan’s painting-lady apparition is truly distressing.

Beverly’s sink experience has an added element that works immensely well.

In fact, almost every ghoul and ghost ticked the right boxes for me.

However…

While I’ve read that a lot of people had no problem with the jump-scares, there were moments when they took me out of the film. Not to press the point too much, but some felt almost like a parody of a jump-scare, where a monster would dive onto the screen only to waggle its tongue and spout something unintelligible, like a kid leaping out of a closet making a silly face and shrieking. I may be a jaded horror movie viewer, but these often made me giggle during moments when I felt that the director wanted me to paint my pants brown, instead.

The cast is great, and as many have already observed Sophia Lillis is perfect as Beverly and likely to be heading for a glittering acting career. The direction is good, the cinematography great, and the sound, lighting and overall atmosphere top-drawer.

Okay. That’s the good stuff. Now let’s change gear.

I found the characters, themes and lore to be painfully trite and 2-dimensional.

We know nothing of Ben’s home life. Stan’s family background is boiled down to his Jewishness. Bill is just a stutterer and not a storyteller. Richie has become a dick-joke-machine. Eddie’s mum has become malevolent rather than simply pathetic. Only Beverly’s character comes close to achieving nuance, as she puts on a brave public face in response to the school’s cruel rumours and her fearful relationship with her revolting, abusive father.

While it’s easy to argue that it would be near-impossible for a film maker to offer even a glimmer of the depth found in the novel, I believe that the characters and the loving friendships they share was drawn better in the 90s mini-series, which dedicated even less time to the children’s story. The problem is that we never see the children hanging out or having fun – they are just caricatured bullied kids who spend their time either getting beaten up or fighting a supernatural entity.

One aspect of the thematic shallowness can partially be blamed on the film’s A-to-B chronology. The book and the 90s miniseries focus heavily on nostalgia and uneasy memories, as the horrors of one summer the characters spent 27 years ago are revealed through a tangled network of flashbacks and recounted recollections. This, for obvious reasons, would have been impossible to portray in IT (2017).

As for the demon’s status as a world-devouring, fear-swallowing, almost God-like entity, in IT (2017) he’s very much an earthbound clown-monster. While there is a hint to them, there are no deadlights. Easter eggs aside, there is no turtle. Gone is the existential terror of something unfathomable, something that creeps through and haunts every element of a town and possibly beyond. As jarring as Pennywise is, in IT (2017), he is essentially a child-killer who says “Boo” a lot. I even wonder if most of today’s audience would have picked up on the idea that Pennywise uses the children’s deepest fears against them, in order to feast on their terror, such is the amount of time spent discussing the subject.

I had issues with the film’s climax, but these veer too close to spoilers. I’ll simply mention three parts near the climax that had me raising my eyebrows, but this is only for those who have already seen it:
The dance was hilarious.
The kiss felt thematically irrelevant.

And the line “…FEAR…” was, um. Actually, what the clown-fucking fuck was that about?

Anyway, despite my gripes, I enjoyed IT (2017) a great deal. My peeves were almost inevitable, because I’m a fanboy, and I would have preferred to have been given a 10-part TV series rather than two movies.
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But that doesn’t mean that I’m not 100% excited for the next instalment.
 

 
I love a good ‘heist’ movie almost as much as I love a good horror, so when the opportunity to watch a combination of both arrived I thought it would be worth my time. Okay, I’m not going to say I was wrong about that, as it was a good enough film to keep my interest overall, but as absolute honesty is my bag I have to tell you that although I enjoyed it overall, it’s a flawed film in a number of ways.
First of all is something which really is just a personal gripe, it’s got a lot to do with James Franco, or to be much more accurate, James Franco’s moustache, it’s well on the way to being a ‘70s porn-stache and deserves a film of its own, but in this one it just looks a bit moth-eaten and obvious.

Moving on from the moustache to the film proper, it’s a great idea, five people stage a robbery which goes pear-shaped almost as soon as they are in the bank, which isn’t the best start, but hey-ho there you go. There’s a dose of mayhem outside as a fire is raging in a warehouse, the fire set by the bank robbers to keep the emergency services busy. Part of me is going ‘nah’ as it’s a bit dumb to bring that kind of heat (pardon the pun) around when trying to rob a bank, but another part of me is thinking that at least they have some sort of cover for the old ‘in-out no messing about’ robbery. There’s a brace of females involved in the blag, one is Leah, a woman attending a job interview, and the other is Vee, an awkward customer, both of whom are just awaiting the arrival of three robbers dressed as firefighters before they drop the acting and get on with the robbing. Unfortunately it’s absolutely clear that it is acting, which is made all the less credible by Francesca Eastwood’s blonde wig, which even on a good day would look like a trainee Drag Queen’s first effort. Is that important? I think so, because if I were interviewing someone for a job in a bank, where trust would be a vital asset, I’d be a little concerned if Clint’s daughter turned up looking like ‘Bad Disguise Barbie’.

The robbery itself doesn’t take much, the usual stuff, hostages bound, their heads hooded in cash-bags, the safe opened after a lot of fumbling and so on, but the yield is poor, so much so that there’s arguing over who stays to look for more or who escapes with the meagre pickings, it’s all a bit pointless as it’s revealed that three of the robbers are family, the brother, Michael, got into a bit of trouble and needs cash to get square, and the women are his sisters who are helping him. Their relation to the two others isn’t really stated, but doesn’t need to be either, as one is a safe-cracker and the other is the muscle. I’m not sure if the brother’s predicament is supposed to elicit sympathy for the robbers, but it doesn’t help, even when Michael remains adamant that they have one rule ‘nobody gets hurt’. Aww, the big bad bank robber has a heart, but the point here is that we’re watching villains performing a heist, and as such they are the bad guys, so it’s not as if we’re going to be rooting for them when they meet their respective fates. Our sympathies should rightly be with the hostages, talking of which:

From underneath a cash bag the hole under James Franco’s moustache offers help. They remove the bag and he tells them that he’s the assistant manager and he can help them get away as well as get six million dollars secreted in a second vault. Obviously this seems the right way to go, and our robbers decide they’ll crack the vault and get rich before going home for beer and pizza. There’s just one snag, which is actually totally spelled out for us in the opening credits as well as talked about in the preamble before the robbery, in 1982 the bank was the scene of a major crime, big nasty robbery gone South resulting in a high body count and things which go bump in the night ever since.

Well, that doesn’t deter the robbers, one of whom grabs his trusty sack of safe-breaking tools and heads for the vault. He does in fact get it open, but that’s not all he gets as some nasties hiding in the dark step out and snag him, forcing him to go all Abel Ferrara with his cracksman’s drill.

I won’t dwell on the gore, there’s not much of it, which is for the better in this instance, same as the ‘jump scares’ being kept to a minimum, so it’s more about the atmosphere and the supposition of something more sinister at work. It’s actually a schizophrenic offering, the heist part being subdued to the overall detriment of the film, especially as it involves a Police Detective, played by Clifton Collins Jr, who is seriously underused throughout. I’ve never seen a bad performance from Mr Jr and always considered him to be one of the finest character actors out there, so to see him in what is basically a throwaway role is a sad waste of a talent. I’m also left wondering what James Franco was doing in this as he is playing a small part in a film in which the comparative unknowns get the major screen time. Maybe he had a slow weekend and the phone rang, who knows, I just think he’s wasted in this.
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What happens below stairs is creepy and malevolent; we’re treated to a few scenes of well-handled horror but to my way of thinking it was all a bit disjointed. The ending is an attempt at a ‘Sixth Sense’ finish but doesn’t come close. Would I recommend it? I think I’d probably say that it’s worth a V.O.D. but I wouldn’t get my umbrella out on a rainy day to go see it at a cinema.
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If we had a GingerNutOmeter this would score around two-thirds of a packet.
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