Sober Horror Fan

Day 126 of Sobriety.   The Sacrament was directed by Ti West, who has recently been making pretty big waves with the Mia Goth-starring X and its sequels.   It’s embarrassing to admit, but this is another film that. like The Dark and The Wicked (2020), which I (re-)watched last week, I had actually seen it before, but didn’t I fully realize that until about halfway through. Well, that’s on me and my boozing. No doubt I was inebriated when I last watched it.   The plot of The Sacrament follows a small news team that is accompanying a man who travels to the commune of a religious cult in a remote (unspecified) jungle location to find his sister. When the crew arrives, they find that all is not well in the commune. It is made in a “found-footage” format, as a fake documentary program being filmed by the VICE media company. (Interesting aside: the cult in the movie is initially described as a “sobriety cult”!)   The film is heavily based on the actual ...

Day 90 of Sobriety.  This is another film that has been on my radar for a while. It is a portmanteau horror movie comprising five short films all connected by a wraparound story. All of the films are shot in “found footage” format. Recently, while watching (in some cases re-watching) the Paranormal Activity series, I have come to realize that I actually really like the found footage format, provided it's done well. One of the main reasons is that it often manages to get under my skin and actually scare me. In addition to the Paranormal Activity films (particularly the first couple), the original Blair Witch Project would be a good example of that. I did not, however, find that to be the case with V/H/S, a lthough I thought the film as a whole was OK. Each of its segments was made by a different director and production team, and as might be expected from that patchwork approach, the result, while interesting, is also a bit patchy. As some general comments, I would say...

Day 89 Of Sobriety.  Well, this was a pleasant surprise—although I’m not sure if the word “pleasant” is wholly appropriate, considering how disturbing some of the scenes in this movie are. I heard about this film when it was mentioned in passing on the excellent Discover the Horror podcast. It is generally described as a “horror western,” and that seems about right. Set in the late 1900s in the “wild west,” the plot concerns a three-man posse led by an elderly sheriff who go to rescue some townspeople (including the wife of one of the posse members) from a clan of Native American cannibals. I had never heard of the film, or the director, S. Craig Zahler. This was his first feature, but I see that he has directed several others that generally seem to be in the exploitation/crime/horror vein, and after watching Bone Tomahawk, I am really looking forward to checking them out. One of them is an entry in the Puppet Master series (none of which I have ever seen). I’m guess...

Day 56 of Sobriety.   Sheesh… Where to start with this one..? I was curious about Martyrs because, while it had a reputation for being extremely violent and disturbing, it also seemed to be pretty well regarded, garnering high positions in quite a lot of rankings of “best horror films of the decade,” and so on. I knew that the film involved graphic scenes of women and children being subjected to abuse, and was not going to be a comfortable experience, so it languished in my “to watch” pile for a considerable time before I felt mentally robust enough to sit down and watch it. And yeah, it was very grim viewing indeed. Without giving away the plot (and it does have a plot—it’s certainly not a mindless film) it is pretty much non-stop violence, trauma, and torture for its entire running time. Having looked at various reviews of the film online, one response that seemed to come up repeatedly in various iterations was, “It’s a good film, but I never, ever, want to sit thr...