Movie Reviews: Drag Me to Hell, Trick R Treat, Rec

Jack and I took in a triple play of horror movies last night and I thought I would discuss them herein.

1) Drag Me to Hell- This just came out earlier in the year and is already on DVD. I got the unrated version (of course) but there is probably just more grossness here than anything else. This movie is all about the slapstick horror and bodily fluids. If you like Sam Raimi's style of grossout horror in the Evil Dead movies, you should dig this. A young loan officer in a bank (Alison Lohman) is cursed by a gypsy who is denied an extension on her mortgage payments. Kind of topical for a bit but really, this is just an excuse to terrorize Ms. Lohman with all manner of indignity. She puts up with even more than Johnny Depp did in Sleepy Hollow. This is just plain fun and not especially scary. You could spend your money in worse ways is what I'm saying.

2) Trick R Treat- Bryan Singer (Usual Suspects, X-Men) produced this movie set in a small Ohio town that takes Halloween very seriously. Four stories intertwine and help each other pay off. You can't really remove one story from the others or the impact sort of falls apart so, in that way, it is a pretty clever movie. Dylan Baker has a story about a high school Principal who is also a serial killer. Some kids visit a maybe-haunted quarry. Anna Paquin is out looking for Mr. Right in all the wrong places. Brian Cox is an old man haunted by the ghost of Halloween. This is a nifty flick with some good creepy moments but nothing especially awesome. Again, there are worse ways to spend your time.

3) Rec- This is a Spanish Language picture that was the basis for Quarantine. Now, I have not seen Quarantine but this had some good chills. Like Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch, this is based on the idea of found footage. A reporter and her camera man follow a Fire crew around for a late night show and end up locked inside a building with some 28 Days Later zombies inside. The movie drags for the first 15 minutes, screams and runs like crazy for the next 30, and then settles into a much better pace once the frantic action slows down a bit. Still, exposition is rushed through, characters a roughly sketched and motivations are shaky at best. However, the movie doesn't really give you time to ponder these things before things are going from bad to worse to apocalyptic. The small set, the restricted point of view and the darkness of the building add to the creepy feel. The final night vision sequence is also pretty freaking awesome. I would recommend this.

Josh

Day 16: FL to SC, The End!

I woke up at my usual 8:30 in Florida without an alarm, got dressed and hit the road (wishing a fond farewell to my awesome hosts). The drive up to Athens took some pretty bizarre back roads (eventually I was on I-75?) and ended up with the GPS not really knowing what was up. Thanks to some directions from Katie, I found the art building and parked in a visitor's garage beside it. A quick walk later and I was in the Athens Cemetery. They had lots of it roped off to preserve it but you could tell the graves had seen better days...




I took some pictures of that and some art projects (totem polls depicting the events of Alice in Wonderland) then got ready for the final push home. I got to Greenville in mid-afternoon and changed up my final destination to the graveyard behind the gas station up the hill from my house. I waited patiently for the customers to wane a bit and then made a dash behind the building. Sure enough, there is a little graveyard back there with more graves than I imagined. Lots of people have been asking me how the whole experience was and I think I can sum it up with one gravestone. It was a...



I know, bad joke. So, on average I drove about 600 miles per day. On total, I drove 9,550 miles in my 16 day journey through all 48 contiguous states. Now, I only have to get to Alaska and I am golden.

Some awards: The friendliest state...Wyoming. The most disappointing state...Oregon (what I saw). State that angered me the most (toll division)...New York. State that angered me the most (useless people division)...Arkansas. Scariest place I visited...Montana's Prison Museum. Best orb photo taken in...Kentucky.

I have opened a photobucket account and started loading all the photos from the trip (I only posted a fraction of the total on this blog). I am trying to share the album to this blog soon. I will load more photos as time permits.

Also, I will keep reviewing horror movies on here for the time being. Thanks for reading! Any questions?

Josh

Day 15: LA to FL

Ok, finally got the rest of the pics loaded into my computer. I am starting a photobucket page where you can see all 200 or so pics from my trip. More details later...

I woke up well rested in New Orleans and drove back through Mississippi into Alabama. I pretty found the Church street cemetery easily and I was looking for the Boyington Oak. This is supposedly a tree that grew out of the grave of a man who was lynched (or something). The problem is, there are about five oaks growing out of graves. I took a bunch of pictures and left when a family of little brats came stomping through the graveyard screaming. Here is a pic...




I packed it in and realized I was way ahead of schedule. I drove at a very relaxed pace to Florida where I also located the Velda Mound with no trouble. I was eaten up with mosquitos but this old Indian Village site was pretty cool...If not teeny tiny...



I got to Katie and Chris's abode early and hung out with them for awhile. We all went out to eat at a place called Cabo Island where I had a good burger. Then, we returned to the apartment for a very fun session of Rock Band (my first time playing it ever). We stayed up late watching SNL and then I spent a restless night trying not to be excited about finishing up my trip.

Josh

Horrorthon 09: Paranormal Activity and some complaints

I am probably going to make some folks mad with this review but I promise no spoilers. First of all, let me just say that I really enjoyed this movie and completely dug what the filmmakers were aiming for. There are solid scares, subtle special effects and (maybe the best compliment I can give a horror movie) it really stabs at the reptilian part of the brain that is scared of dark corners and empty spaces. Now then I have to say, don't go see this in the theater.

If you watch this, watch it on DVD/blu-ray/whatever, in your house with the lights off in the middle of the night. I can almost promise you will have a better time. In a completely unscientific poll, I have concluded that audiences all over America are made up of a good percentage of idiots. Total morons, in fact. I understand that scary movies can cause nervous laughter and even some inane babbling but, for the love of all that is good and holy, shut the **** up. Everyone I know who has seen the movie (including myself) has had the experience partially to largely ruined by rude audiences who believe they are in their living room. Thus, if you read this and are one of the talker types, watch this at home where you can dialogue freely with the characters on screen who can't hear you. If you aren't a talker, still watch this at home to avoid the talkers.

The rant isn't quite over either. Besides rude people in theaters, this movie brings out the other lamest group of theater patrons: those who hate to use their brains (the Venn diagram for these two groups is pretty much one solid circle). Besides the premise of the movie, there was another way in which my experience echoed that of seeing the Blair Witch Project in the theater...as I walked out I heard about half the audience complain that they didn't understand and thought the movie wasn't scary. I guess if a little transvestite doll on a tricycle isn't taunting you into cutting your own spleen out, the movie is operating on too subtle a level for most people. People want gore and viscera and to be spoon fed every little bit of information. Well, guess what? This movie requires you to use your imagination. I was wondering if the people walking out disappointed with this movie were the same ones walking out of Blair Witch ten years ago complaining about that and then I realized, nope, these people would have been 9 years old when Blair Witch came out. It isn't their fault that their brains can't wrap themselves around the idea that there is true horror in what you can't see.

One of my favorite horror movies from the past few years, the Orphanage, figured out that our minds can conjure horrors beyond anything CGI can show us. The best moments of this movie, the Orphanage, and Blair Witch are the moments when we don't want to look into that dark hallway, over that shoulder or into those woods but we do anyway...terrified but thrilled at what we might see. If that sounds boring to you, keep your dumb ass at home.

Josh

Day 14: AR to LA

Now that I am back home, I am hoping to wrap all this up.

When last I posted, I had made it through a night of horrible dreams and sweltering heat. I left the hotel in Blytheville and, due to my first apparent failing in my planning, I had to back track to Jonesboro, AR. I found the cemetery at Keller's Chapel easily enough. The legend goes that you can hear a baby crying at this location along with some other weird things. I could have sworn I heard something like a cry but...





I don't know if you can make it out in that picture, there was a house under construction behind the cemetery property. I think I heard the whine of a saw or some workers talking. At any rate, I stayed perfectly still but never heard the sound again.

Getting back on the road, I drove down into Mississippi to visit the town of...er, ok, I have forgotten the town name but the church in question was the Church of Christ beside a daycare. Luckily, all the kids were gone for the day or I wouldn't have been able to get so close. I took all sorts of shots but nothing creepy happened. Check out the iron work on this fence...



Pretty cool, I think. Getting done there, I drove straight down to New Orleans, getting stuck in some mild traffic (nothing like the Chicago fiasco). I checked into my hotel and walked over to the French quarter (trying and failing to find the statue of Ignatius Reilly). I took some shots that didn't come out so well but here is a poorly lit shot of a church from which a woman threw herself on her wedding day...



I wandered into a place called the Corner Bar and Oyster House (I think) and ate some Jambalaya. My bill came out to $42 dollars. I decided to walk over to the local casino and see if they were having any poker tournaments. When I got there, I decided to check my account balance and found I had $38 to my name! I had a flash of the hotel claiming they would place a hold on accounts for incidentals but they never asked me which account I wanted to do that with. I rushed back to my hotel and got online just to discover, yep, I really did only have 38 dollars. By the time I updated my accounts and moved some money around, I was pretty exhausted (also from lack of sleep the night before). I meant to go back down to the French Quarter and take more pictures but I fell asleep before that could be done. At least I had a solid 9 hours that night.

The final two days are coming soon...

Josh

Day 13: OK to AR

Pretty much caught up now. I left Oklahoma in the rain and drove North towards Kansas (passing briefly through Arkansas). My target was the Witches Grave in Galena, KS. I found the graveyard in question but couldn't tell which witch was which. So I just took a bunch of pics...



I journeyed on to M Highway in Van Buren, Missouri (after a tragically comic incident with a one armed man at a bathroom nearby). There was an old, abandoned house on the road (one that would give me pause if I were a kid) but you can't really see it in this photo...




At any rate, it was spooky, but the locals were getting a little nervous about my presence, so I left. I made it into Kentucky right around sundown and went to the graveyard I thought was the dumbest idea of the whole trip. I found the angel that supposedly drops a rock on your head at midnight and took a picture. Looky looky what came out...



Yep, another orb. The best yet. I am pretty stoked about this one. I drove out of the cemetery and, with help from mom, found my way to my hotel in Blytheville, Arkansas. The room had exposed brick in it and actually got hotter as the night went on. I watched Rob Zombie's Halloween and then proceeded to have nightmares involving Thom Yorke, Hudson and Isobel, a zombie and waves so high they blocked out the sun. I need to quit listening to so much HP Lovecraft while I am driving.

Josh