Comments on some horror movies I’ve seen
Disturbia
More thriller than horror, but I’m reviewing it anyway. This is like a teen version of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” Some teens think they witness a murder in the neighbor’s house. No surprises in the plot, but this movie was actually better than I thought it would be.
Grade: 3 out of 5
The Wig
Middle of the road Asian horror about a haunted wig. Soon a girl who has lost her hair in chemotherapy gets the wig, and bad things start happening. This ridiculous story is handled very seriously, and that saves the movie. Some suspenseful moments, but not enough.
Grade: 2 out of 5
Skeleton Key
In this low key voodoo horror Kate Hudson takes a job as a nurse in a creepy house in New Orleans. She takes care of an old man who can’t speak. But why is he so terrified of mirrors?
The movie is not scary, and the pace is slow, but it still kept me interested till the shocking end.
Grade: 3 out of 5
Halloween Night
From low-budget company The Asylum comes a movie that they hope people will rent “by mistake” in the video store thinking it’s “Halloween.” In this movie an escaped killer stalks teens at a Halloween-party.
I really like The Asylum, and I absolutely love low-budget horror movies, but this movie is NOT scary.
Grade: 1 out of 5
Colic
This is an average horror flick from Thailand. A couple have a baby who is somehow cursed. When their baby cries, someone will die. The movie is atmospheric, slow and a bit confusing. There’s no real action until the last five minutes.
Grade: 2 out of 5
When A Stranger Calls
Remake of the movie from 1979 about a babysitter being terrorized by a killer. They took the chilling opening 20 minutes from the original and stretched it out into a full length movie. The result? Decent, but not very frightening. But the killer whispering “Have you checked the children?” is still creepy.
Grade: 3 out of 5
Switchblade Romance / High Tension
This French movie (original title is “Haute Tension”) is excellent. Two college girls stay in a parent’s country house when a killer attacks in the middle of the night and slaughters the family. One girl gets kidnapped by the killer, and it’s now up to the other girl to save her.
This is a wild ride for sure. Most of the story is “borrowed” from Dean Koontz’s book “Intensity” but I’m willing to forgive that since the movie is so good (at least the first hour.) This is a lesson in raw suspense.
Grade: 4 out of 5
Henrik Holmberg writes horror scripts for indie filmmakers.
Check out his website: http://www.horror-scripts.com
Tags: disturbia, film, films, halloween, horror, movie, movies, review, reviews
