Sober Horror Fan

Day 174 of Sobriety.     So, this one really has me scratching my head—I just don’t know what to make of Twixt at all. It's a 2011 film written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It features a few big names, notably (for me) Val Kilmer in the lead role and Tom Waits providing some voice-over narration. But, confoundingly, given its credentials, it’s pretty damned awful.     Its Stephen King-esque plot revolves around a struggling (alcoholic) horror writer who visits a small US town on a book signing tour and discovers that the town has a strange dark secret involving child murderers and ghosts.     On paper, this should have been great, but watching it, it's actually hard to believe that it was really made by the director responsible for towering classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. It seems to have been shot very cheaply on video. It looks completely flat, the music is uninspired, the frequent dream sequences look like a self-pro...

Day 168 of Sobriety.     Lake Mungo is a 2008 film by director Joel Anderson, who seems to have made this one feature and then vanished with scarcely a trace, which is a great shame because Lake Mungo is very good. It tells the extremely sad story of a family who lose their teenage daughter in a tragic drowning accident, and the uncanny events that follow in its wake. It is presented as a faux documentary—a “mockumentary”—and I think it is one of the best examples of that style that I have seen.     The acting is absolutely convincing throughout. I found it very easy to “buy into” the mockumentary conceit and allow myself to be convinced that I was watching something real. Apparently, the actors were given scenarios, but no actual script, and so the dialogue (or more often than not monologue) is all improvised.    Like several more recent films, such as Hereditary (2018), Midosommar (2019) and Talk to Me (2022), the exploration of bereavement and grief...

Day 161 of Sobriety.  What could I possibly say about Dario Argento’s Suspiria that hasn’t been said already? Not much I don’t think. I’ve seen it several times before, but this re-viewing was prompted by wanting to watch it with my wife, because we recently watched (and enjoyed) Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (2021) together, and I was keen to show her where a good deal of that film’s visual style originated. We also watched the 2018 remake of Suspiria a while back, and I think she liked it (I do). While I now consider the 1977 Suspiria to be a classic, I remember being underwhelmed when I first saw it in my late teens or early twenties—thinking it was OK, but being bewildered as to why it was held in such high acclaim. I think my only exposure to Dario Argento prior to that was via his involvement in Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985), which was much more up my teenage alley. Although I am certain that the impression Suspiria made on me back then was greatly impaired by watchin...

Day 150 of Sobriety. I had been looking forward to seeing Possum for a while, and finally caved in and bought it on blu-ray , as that is probably the only way I will ever get to see this independent British production. It was directed by Matthew Holness, who is familiar to some of us through his work on British TV, notably his Channel 4 horror-comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and his brief appearances in Ricky Gervais’ The Office as Simon, the obnoxious computer technician. Around the time Possum was released, I read an excellent interview with Holness on the wonderful Haunted Generation hauntology blog. In the interview Holness discusses his various inspirations, many of which are hauntological in nature, such as the British public information films of the 1970s, and also his love of Hammer films. So much of what he said resonated with me that I couldn’t wait to see all of those influences manifest themselves in his first feature film: Possum .   Unfortunately, upo...

Day 142 of Sobriety.      So, I had heard a little bit about Tusk before I watched it, and I had gathered that it was a strange and divisive film, despite having quite mainstream credentials—it was directed by Kevin Smith who made Clerks (1994) and the Jay and Silent Bob films, among others, and it co-stars Johnny Depp. I was curious about Tusk because it is distributed by A24, and I tend to really like A24’s horror output.   The bizarre plot follows an obnoxious, arrogant podcaster who travels to Canada to conduct an interview for his show. In Canada, he happens to meet an eccentric retired sailor, who he believes will make excellent subject matter for his podcast, which seems to focus on jeering at eccentric people. Unfortunately for the podcaster, the sailor has his own sinister plans for him, that involve his obsession with a walrus who once saved his life.   The film is part comedy, part horror (with the body-horror element being particular...

Day 140 of Sobriety. It has bothered me for a while that I have never really seen any of the iconic Universal Classic Monsters films, even though they are a key component in the heritage of the horror films that I love. I’m pretty sure I saw Dracula (1931) at some point, but for the most part, the Universal films are so old and omnipresent that I never felt the urge or need to actually sit down and purposefully watch them. Deciding to rectify this, I recently bought the “Complete 30-film collection” blu-ray box, and have embarked, at least initially, on watching the films in their order of release. The Mummy is the third film that I have watched from the set, following on from Dracula and Frankenstein (1931). The set itself is pretty nice, but it does have a few issues. For one thing, it is not really “complete,” as promised by its title. It doesn’t include several of the classic Universal horror films, with The Black Cat (1934) being a notable omission, and several f...

Day 140 of Sobriety. I came across The Pact when I found it included on a list of “atmospheric horror films.” The list included a number of my favorite films, such as Mandy (2018), Hereditary (2018), and The Shining (1980), plus a few that I’d never heard of, including The Pact . Since it was in such good company, I thought I would check it out. The story is about a young woman (Annie) who travels to her old family home in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles following the death of her mother, at the same time her sister (Nicole) and cousin (Liz) disappear under mysterious circumstances. Annie tries to find out what happened to them, while trying to come to terms with her family’s dark past. One thing that distinguishes The Pact from most of its neighbors on the “atmospheric horror films” list that I saw is that it is clearly a low-budget, independently produced work. It looks to me like it was shot on video, and has that slightly flat “TV soap opera”-ish look. That’s a ...