Harefooted Halloween: Halloween Ends

What I Liked: They wanted to pass the torch (or knife I suppose) to a young fella to keep the homicides going because hey, Michael’s old.  Technically he’s not supernatural so it stands to reason.  And this isn’t a bad idea.  The filmmakers invest everything they got into this by building up backstory and having almost the entire movie be about the new guy, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell (A Miracle on Christmas Lake)).  And then they wiz it all down their leg by the end.

What I Didn’t Like: A lot of the shit they threw in here doesn’t really make much sense.  First off it’s important to know this takes place four years after Kills.  Laurie’s (Jamie Lee Curtis (The Tailor of Panama)) not a survivalist armed to teeth waiting for Michael to return anymore.  She’s a regular person living in town now writing a book about her experiences.  The thing is Michael’s still at large having disappeared into the night at the end of the last film so I don’t know why she’s suddenly not all that worried about him anymore.  She patiently waited for him to come for her for forty goddamn years (which he did validating her extreme preparedness) but another four years is taking shit too far?  Everything’s ok now?  And the townspeople hate her because they think she’s somehow responsible for Michael’s actions.  This series got the progression of Laurie backwards.  She should be trying to live a normal life in the 2018 Halloween and then between Kills and Ends she shields herself in a fortified home packed to the gills with weapons.  Anyway, Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak (Assimilate)), instantly falls in love with Corey the moment they meet.  Putting aside the two actors not having great chemistry together, this relationship comes across contrived with Allyson continuing to pursue the guy despite him admitting to murdering someone and not reporting it.  Michael has been living in a sewer pipe for the past four years with his mask still on and we don’t know why he stopped killing folks.  This is abrupt and out of character.  Corey befriends Michael and becomes partners in crime with him which is as weird as it sounds.  And I guess Michael listens to him and follows his commands?  The citizens of Haddonfield can sense Corey has turned evil (except Allyson) and yea, they’re right but they have no evidence he’s done anything wrong.  All the victims are such assholes who you want to see get maimed (a complete turnaround from Kills where too many nice innocent people died).  The action is edited horribly.  I don’t think it’s shot particularly well and during those scenes they follow the current trend of very dim lighting adding yet another layer of obstruction.

Overall Impressions: You have to ignore the title and all the marketing surrounding the movie hyping it as a culmination of this current set because it’s misleading to an extent.  In reality it’s completely separate from its predecessors in just about every way.  The impression I’m getting from most folks is they feel like they were fooled by a bait and switch with Michael being sidelined for the majority of the runtime and Corey taking over as the main character.  And I’ll admit I felt this way at first too.  But once you push beyond that and view it as a standalone entry I think you’ll come around to appreciating what the filmmakers tried to do, even if it ultimately fails.  Structuring a Halloween picture around someone or something other than Michael Myers is an idea worth delving into.  Ignoring the stupid half baked Thorn cult crap from a couple of the sequels they only truly attempted this one other time with part III and that didn’t go over so well.  And that seems to be happening again.

The biggest head scratcher in this whole thing is they setup Corey to be the new Michael, go right up to the finish line but then at the last second change their mind.  This makes the picture come off like a total waste of time.  If they were going to abandon the central plot point and have it be Michael by the end anyway then what the hell are we doing?  None of this mattered.

In this trilogy (really quadrilogy because the original ’78 installment is part of this) Ends is definitely the most noteworthy entry but I honestly don’t know if I like it better than Kills and that was dumb as shit.  The thing is Kills is way more in line with a traditional Halloween movie and there’s a certain comfort in that.  It’s almost more frustrating to sit through a film that is so confident and concentrated on a specific direction only to change course in the last moments.  On top of that the big showdown between Michael and Laurie feels tacked on and redundant.  It’s not like this is the first time they’ve squared off.  We’ve seen these two duke it out a few times over the years (including just two movies ago!) so yet another rematch isn’t something I care that much about.  Sadly the whole situation ends up being a lose-lose.

Other huge horror franchises have tinkered with the notion of transferring evil to a new host so it’s sorta remarkable it took a Halloween this long to go there (and even though magical shit isn’t supposed to exist in this specific universe individuals can still be corrupted in the real world).  In Jason Goes to Hell the spirit of Jason is passed via giant slug worm from one person to another turning them into monsters and in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy recruits a high school teen to become his protégé.  But we don’t even have to go back that far.  Curiously the 2021 Candyman explores the same exact territory as Ends except does it much more effectively.

So I almost liked it.  Doing different stuff than the same old bullshit is fine and the angle they went with isn’t terrible.  But the execution takes a nosedive when they destroy what they took the time to build.  Look, none of the sequels, these or the others, come very close to being a worthy successor to the first.  And while they all have their own special issues Ends surprisingly has the most going for it.  Sure, the thing is kinda sloppily put together and I laughed out loud more than once at a part that wasn’t supposed to be funny but the concepts it lays out are somewhat intriguing.  I’m really interested to see how this particular installment plays years from now.

Harefooted Halloween: In Fabric

What I Liked: The concept of a haunted dress is fantastic.  It’s so simple and you could do a lot with how the dress affects whoever wears it.  The flowy red design with sleeves is also genius because the thing can appear sort of ghostly like a body without legs, hands or a head.  It marks the wearer with a rash-like lesion on the skin and gets into their head where they start to see things.

All the performances are good including Sidse Babett Knudsen (Westworld TV show) as the creepy sales woman who sells the dress in question but Marianne Jean-Baptiste (The Cell) is the standout.  She’s a single mom working as a bank teller looking for a new love.  She’s a very relatable level headed normal person who gets thrown into a waking nightmare of a situation with a dress ruining her life.  Jean-Baptiste is so natural and likable in the role that you want to see her survive the wrath of the cursed garment.

What I Didn’t Like: Ok, the real big problem I have is the execution of the idea.  I want it to be a straight forward evil dress picture similar to Christine (killer car) or The Lift (killer elevator) but instead this takes a more abstract approach.  You know, stuff like the shop that sells the dress are run by weirdos/witches in black dresses who masturbate to their pubic hair laden mannequins and they can cause the dress to move through intense ritual and half way through the movie we switch to a new set of characters and one of those characters puts people in a trance whenever he talks in laundry machine repair jargon and what the fuck am I even watching anymore?  At first I thought there was a damn good film in here but it needed a serious re-edit.  Maybe eliminate most of the bizzarro shop stuff, smooth out the choppy editing during the more exciting scenes and get a soundtrack that fits better (I do kinda like the music but it doesn’t work that well with the visuals).  But then the story shifts to a completely different and much less interesting group of victims and a re-edit isn’t possible anymore.  So a re-write is what’s really needed.  And this is immensely frustrating because writer/director Peter Strickland (Bjork: Biophilia Live) came up with a bunch of great stuff that’s ultimately wasted.  For instance the dress brings bad luck to whoever wears it so someone might get attacked by a dog or get a cut on their arm or lose their job.  These incidents pile up turning the victim’s life into a living hell.  Also, the dress can’t be destroyed by conventional means.  So when it clearly gets torn or burnt it shows up later as if brand new from Satan’s sweatshop.  And you can’t wash it.  If you try it’ll shake the laundry machine to pieces.  Man, what fucking awesome ideas.  They’re only touched on briefly though compared to the rest of the runtime which is filled with awkward conversations not about the dress, the goings on of the mysterious folks who run the clothing store and other happenings like the victims’ dreams.

Overall Impressions: Damn this fucker’s unfocused.  There’s good shit in here but it’s buried under a mountain of artsy bewilderment.  A lot of this stuff comes across like weird for weird’s sake too like when one of the characters has been terminated and hands over his ID card his boss eats it.  Sure, whatever.

I would love to see this concept done down the middle because there’s a lot of potential.  This could be miles better than it is.

Harefooted Halloween: The Unborn

What I Liked: Brooke Adams (Days of Heaven, The Dead Zone) goes all out with her performance.  As she learns the truth behind her pregnancy she gets more and more distraught and eventually completely flips her shit.  There’s a great part where she’s alone in her house and noises like the phone ringing and the car alarm drive her crazy so she tosses a brick through the car window and rips the wires out.  Then she goes looking for her cat’s toy and turns the house upside down trashing everything in sight.  When her visiting mother walks through the door she very calmly explains “Everything’s ok, I was just looking for something…”.  This snap to the opposite pole is funny but also effective.  Adams carries the movie with her dedication to the role of a mother to be starting off normal and descending into madness.

The film exploits fear for your child’s health and uncertainty about motherhood fairly well.  These are ancient sentiments that are innate in everyone so the themes work.  To go through the process of having a child you need to put your faith into the hands of experts, especially if you’ve been unsuccessful in that effort for a long time.  So when you start to think that trust has been betrayed it’s devastating.  As I get older I have to admit storylines like these hit harder for me.

Gary Numan did the score and it’s a pretty cool use of moody synths and drum machine.  Strangely at times it sounds more like an action movie soundtrack from the time period and unfortunately also has a weaker B movie vibe here and there.  But when it’s in the pocket it creates a nice ominous atmosphere.

What I Didn’t Like: The production has a cheaper feel in general.  They sprang for some effects towards the end and went for a neat looking hard car crash but other than that it’s mainly a pregnant woman losing her mind and uncovering a mystery from the confines of her house and doctor’s office.

Speaking of the effects they employ an animatronic/puppet baby for the finale and it doesn’t look so hot.  This is just a matter of they didn’t have the budget to pull off a convincing looking evil baby but still, the shit they make this guy do is comical.  I don’t want to say any more so you’ll be surprised in case you throw this one on.

Overall Impressions: This is an ok sort of Rosemary’s Baby knock off.  If it weren’t for Brooke Adams’ passionate performance this would be very tedious to sit through.  There are some parts that are unintentionally humorous, especially towards the end, that push this firmly into fun territory.  But there are also a few scenes that are genuinely creepy.  For example there’s an extremely disturbing part where another woman also thinks there’s something wrong with her baby and she stabs herself in her very pregnant belly with a knife in an attempt to kill it.  I mean my jaw fell to the floor when I saw they went for that full on.  Plus there’s a horrific abortion scene.

So you’ll get a mix of quality with this film.  Sometimes it’s actually pieced together well, other times it’s pretty damn schlocky and still other times there’s real deal unsettling shit.

Harefooted Halloween: The Dentist 2

What I liked: Some of the visuals this time are really cool.  It starts out with Dr. Alan Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen (Tales from the Hood)) fantasizing about mutilating his ex-wife’s mouth all over again in a blaring white dental exam room which makes the blood pop right out at you.  Then later he imagines his ex-wife again along with another one of his victims taunting him, one zombified with rotting flesh and no lips and the other has pointed metal shards jutting directly out of their gums for teeth and an elongated tongue.  This is the same unforgettable figure on the cover of one of the VHS boxes.  It’s this image that’s burned into my memory from encountering it countless times in the video store.

A model for closeup shots of people’s various mouths is used again and it looks a touch more convincing this time.  They really dig in there with a Novocain needle and a drill and they have blood squirting from where teeth are yanked out and cockroaches are crawling around inside and it looks just great.  So nasty.

What I Didn’t Like: The story is surprisingly confusing.  Feinstone breaks out of a mental hospital, makes his way to Paradise, MO, retrieves a safety deposit box full of cash and fake ID documents and settles into small town life.  Eventually he becomes the town dentist after killing the current one, albeit accidentally, and starts murdering folks when he thinks he’s been found out.  So I guess Feinstone had a backup plan to assume a new identity somewhere remote because he knew shit was eventually gonna go bad?  And I think it’s alluded to that he setup similar safety deposit boxes across the country.  But he also knows the bank manager in the small town under his new fake name somehow which is how he gets in good with the townspeople and they know he’s a dentist even though he doesn’t produce any credentials and goddamn…none of this shit is ever explained.

Bernsen only gets to become totally unhinged in the last act of the film.  Before that Feinstone tries to keep his insanity in check by cutting into his arm with a razor for temporary relief.  He still acts weird and hallucinates filth penetrating all corners of the world but he’s nothing like the nonstop crazy fucking asshole of the previous film.  When Bernsen is finally let loose he’s awesome.  He hams it up, laughs manically, flashes ominous scowls, wipes blood all over his face and wacky shit like that.  It’s just a shame we have to wait so long for that turn to happen.

Overall Impressions: This has a similar pacing issue as its predecessor where the stuff you came for is jammed in towards the end.  The difference is Feinstone is attempting to act normal here for the majority of the runtime instead of bouncing off the walls from the get-go.  And admittedly that makes for a bit of a slog.  The effects and some of the imagery are actually probably better executed but the story is completely nonsensical and not as straight forward as it should be.  If you really enjoyed the first movie though you’ll get a kick out of the sequel.

The Dentist series is definitely a bizarre one that’s off the beaten path.  Like I mentioned in my last review it’s a brilliantly natural concept for a horror movie because so many people hate going to the dentist.  However, I don’t know if there’s more than one picture’s worth of material to mine.  Feinstone is an irascibly entertaining character to hang out with for a little while but I don’t think he can carry a whole franchise.  He grates on you.  Two is more than enough.  Oh that reminds me, don’t forget to brush twice a day.

Harefooted Halloween: The Dentist

What I Liked: Corbin Bernsen (Major League) plays the deranged dentist Dr. Alan Feinstone and he delivers one of the most over the top mega acting performances I’ve ever seen.  From minute one he’s totally pissed about a stain the dry cleaners didn’t get out of his pink dress shirt and then yells at his wife for not noticing.  But he’ll turn on a dime and be friendly and seemingly in a good mood like when he’s chatting with one of his patients.  This guy is such an asshole where he constantly berates his poor staff, never thinks he’s in the wrong and it’s suggested he's doing something shady with his taxes as evidenced by an IRS agent (Earl Boen (Terminators)) snooping around.  But then on top of that he has hallucinations about everything around him being filthy (decaying teeth, greasy hands, etc.) and he sees himself as the only person standing between a clean pure world and a dirty rotting one.  A hard break from reality ensues after he catches his wife (Linda Hoffman (Face/Off)) blowing the pool guy.  Shit escalates rapidly in his mind to the point where he’s gotta kill everyone in his path.  I don’t know if Bernsen’s acting job is good necessarily because it’s very aggressive and kind of all over the map but it sure is entertaining.  For a low budget B horror picture like this where there isn’t a lot of nuance and mostly extremes of emotions it works.  I do like that he’s tortured by his own thoughts and detestable feelings at first about his wife cheating on him and then simply runs with the zaniness because he can’t control himself any longer.  But he’s not a sympathetic character at all.  He’s a monster who not only tortures his victims using anything he can find in his practice but he also sexually assaults a woman and holds his dental students at gun point ordering them to extract all the teeth in their volunteer patients’ mouths.  Over the course of two days he ruins a lot of people’s lives.

The effects are fairly decent for what they had to work with.  There are a few busted up mouths that Feinstone creates through pulling teeth, drilling, etc. and those are sorta cartoonishly grotesque but that’s the kinda movie we’re dealing with.  The real centerpiece is a model of the inside of a mouth effects master Kevin Yagher (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2-4) designed as a favor (he was out of their price range).  So they get to show nice closeups of teeth getting destroyed, a hypodermic needle piercing the gums and shit like that.

As silly as this film can get they do deliver on a dentist using the tools of his trade to maim and murder folks.  And the filmmakers were smart enough to throw in some other methods of destruction to keep you on your toes.

What I Didn’t Like: Pacing is an issue.  While we do eventually get to witness the dentist related carnage we all came for it takes a long while for it to happen.  It’s more than halfway through the runtime before Feinstone rips out a perfectly healthy tooth.  We get plenty of wacky shit before that though like Feinstone fantasizing about confronting the pool guy and his wife about their affair in the grossest way possible.  Bernsen’s performance is what makes you wanna stick with the story to see what else this fucking lunatic is gonna do.

Most of the characters are dicks.  Feinstone’s wife, the pool guy, his neighbor, Mark Ruffalo shows up as a slimy fashion model agent, they’re all jerks but the biggest piece of shit (besides Feinstone) is the IRS agent.  He’s not only lewd and obnoxious but he strikes a deal with Feinstone to make the tax investigation go away if he provides some free dental work.  That’s so fucking stupid.  So of course he gets his mouth fucked with pretty badly.

The score is a cheap toss off with bad synth strings and stabs.

Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) plays the cop investigating Feinstone’s trail of devastation and he feels wasted here.  It’s not a very big role and there isn’t anything special for him to do.  Oh well.

Overall Impressions: It may take a little while to kill people via dentistry but they definitely get there.  Feinstone’s psychosis triggered by his wife fooling around with another man wasn’t something I expected and I guess it’s a fine excuse for why he’s suddenly a maniac armed with nitrous oxide and a mouth clamp.

Fear of the dentist is extremely common and a natural to exploit for a horror movie.  Even if you don’t have that fear (I personally don’t) tooth pain is something we’ve all experienced so in theory the film should appeal to a wide audience.  However, between Bernsen’s exaggerated acting, the lower budget and not ideal pacing this is gonna be a hard sell for most folks.

Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon are a dynamic duo that brought us such revered classics as Re-Animator and From Beyond so if you’re into those this is probably worth checking out.  It’s nowhere near as imaginative or memorable as those though.  It might be good to watch before your next dentist appointment though.  Could make the visit more exciting.

Harefooted Halloween: Candyman (2021)

What I liked: Beautiful cinematography work (John Glueserian (Trial by Fire)).  The combination of a locked down camera and straight forward pans and glides adds a sense of weight to the visuals.  You can focus on the scenes without being distracted by jittering all the time.  The colors are vibrant and deep and makes the world feel amped up to a slight degree.  Use of mirrors and reflective surfaces play a big role and you can tell the filmmakers had fun figuring out ways to incorporate reflections either organically or stylistically into the shots.  You add all this up and there’s an almost Kubrickian quality to the way the film is presented with everything seeming a bit off.

And that leads to some good atmosphere.  The main gimmick of summoning Candyman by saying his name five times while looking in the mirror definitely creates serious tension and suspense.  They do this several times during the run and each one only gets more stressful.  Candyman creates immense havoc by daring folks to say his name, building fear among the characters, being a legit threat by brutally dispatching his victims and not to mention he could decide to show up in any reflective surface.  There’s not a lot of fooling around here which is great.  We slide into a wormhole of anxiety and madness at an exponential rate.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Matrix Resurrections) gives a wonderful performance as the artist/painter Anthony McCoy being recruited and tortured by Candyman.  One bee sting slowly turns his hand into a scabby mess, then his arm, then his body and he knows it’s inescapable.  He’s caught in the Candyman’s grasp and continues to get harassed by him while compulsively painting darker pictures and trying to understand who this guy is.  Abdul-Mateen starts off charming and excited about his new artwork but then becomes distant and insensitive.  He does such a nice job of letting you know what he’s thinking by his facial expressions, body language and a few short sentences.  For instance there’s a scene where McCoy’s being interviewed in an art critic’s apartment and at first he fidgets uncomfortably but then once he receives some compliments on his macabre artwork he starts to half smile and get a wild look in his eye.  The tone of Abdul-Mateen’s mood is pitch perfect as a man who’s trying to be stoic but can barely tamp down the evil simmering up inside him.

Cool soundtrack (Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe) with a main theme that has a looping synth line that constantly adjusts its pattern.  Throw some faintly spooky voices underneath and you got yourself a memorable tune.

What I Didn’t Like: Unfortunately the story’s a little too confusing BUT only because of how it relates to the original film.  The myth and character of Candyman are changed around significantly enough that they should’ve had this be a straight reboot.  And they make it crystal clear that this is a sequel to the 1992 picture referencing the events and main character, Helen Lyle, throughout so there’s no going around that.  If they started over from scratch I don’t think I’d have this hang up.  Look, I applaud when anyone takes a new installment in a franchise and makes it their own (whether they succeed or fail in that attempt is a different story) but they hedged their bet here which may not have been the right move.

There are some awkward character choices that come across as contrived.  For example in the beginning one character abruptly asks his friends if they want to hear a scary story and they say no.  He then proceeds to turn off the lights and light candles before giving a somewhat retconned recap of the original film.  This lead in is ridiculously unnatural.  Or McCoy’s hand gets mangier and mangier after a Candyman bee stings it but he doesn’t go see a doctor until towards the end of the movie (there’s a plot reason for this but it’s still odd).  And we find out McCoy’s girlfriend’s father killed himself in front of her when she was a little girl but it’s never really explored or expanded on.  I guess that means she’s attracted to self-destructive people?

Overall Impressions: This is a very enjoyable picture with a lot to like.  Plus the commentary on racism and classism works well and is balanced out enough with the creepy shit that you don’t feel like you’re being lectured to.  Sure, there are some clunky aspects but they can be mostly overlooked.

What’s really interesting is how much of an amalgam of other horror films this reminds me of and I mean that in a good way.  It’s a little bit of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 with the villain grooming a protégé, a little bit of Poltergeist 3 with the mirror gags, a little bit of The Invisible Man and Nightmare on Elm Street with people being gutted invisibly by Candyman, a little bit of The Fly (1986) when McCoy pulls off one of his rotting fingernails and a little bit of The Shining with some of the shot compositions and general off kilter atmosphere.  All movies I love with elements from each woven together pretty seamlessly.  Sweet stuff.

Harefooted Halloween: The Omen (2006)

I’m going to forgo my usual format for this one because we have a very odd duck here.  Normally when people do a remake they keep the core concept but change the details and modify events, sometimes to a significant degree, and introduce or drop certain characters and etc.  It’s a new take, a new perspective, a new approach to the previous material which then becomes its own thing.  That’s the whole idea of re-doing a movie that already exists.  Well with the 2006 Omen they went in a different direction and just made the same exact film again.  Now it’s not a shot for shot remake like the 1998 Psycho (which I maintain is a fascinating experiment that someone had to do at least once) but it’s one step down from that (similar to the ’91 Father of the Bride remake).  All the events, characters, reveals and damn near every specific are the same as the 1976 Omen.

Ok yes, there are a few differences.  They added a couple of brief dream sequences, an extra death in the beginning and they start off with Roman priests talking about the coming of the antichrist because they saw a special grouping of comets in the night sky.  And the methods used to kill two characters are different.  Other than that though the ’76 and ’06 pictures are identical.  Hell, you could cut out the few new scenes they added and it wouldn’t make a difference to the plot.  It would also make the movie that much closer to its predecessor.

So I truly genuinely don’t understand what the thinking was.  If you’re not going to switch stuff up and put your own spin on the story then why bother?  What’s the appeal?  The original wasn’t lost to time or hard to get ahold of or a box office flop that basically nobody saw or anything like that.  Nor was it made so long ago that it was due for a rediscovery either.  The thing was only thirty years old when this remake came out.  Weird is an understatement.

With all of that said, how is it?  It’s good.  It’s a fine film because it’s just The Omen (check out my review if you want more of my thoughts on that version and therefore this one).  And well, if you’re gonna do something like this then I guess avoiding a shot for shot copy is smart.  While still tedious to a degree it’s less so and allows some leeway (however small).  The performances are adequate, the pacing is decent and every once in a while they throw in a neat visual despite the film having a mostly dreary greyish blueish slate type tone throughout (it was popular to suck a bunch of color out back then).  And sure, Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby) as Mrs. Baylock might actually be better than Billie Whitelaw from the original.  And the famous beheading scene is accomplished through better effects as well.  No Jerry Goldsmith score though.  Only a generic sounding one so that’s a real minus.

Boy do I have some mixed feelings about this sucker.  I mean the movie isn’t bad at all but it doesn’t have any reason to exist.  It’s kinda fucked up.  Maybe the best thing I can say about it is it gave the folks who worked on it experience making a major Hollywood motion picture and hopefully they were able to build on that in their career.  Oh and the marketing move to release it on 06/06/06 was clever.  Clearly an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.  Maybe it was all worth it then?

Harefooted Halloween: Omen IV: The Awakening

What I Liked: Aiyee let’s skip to the next section.

What I Didn’t Like: While the script isn’t good really a bigger problem is this thing just isn’t directed well.  Dominique Othenin-Girard of Halloween 5 fame was initially hired to helm but quit half way through and was replaced by Jorge Montesi of Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal fame (that’s a very fun bad movie by the way, you should check it out).  And it’s not that you can clearly tell two different people put this together (although sometimes you do get that sense), it’s that the whole thing feels weird.  For example there are many fades into and out of black that make for awkward scene transitions.  I know this was a made for TV movie but there still isn’t a good flow to the material.  The score has this bizarre cartoony edge with xylophone in particular being clumsily employed.  Not only that but they put music in places that don’t need it.  And one of the other big issues is they directed Asia Vieira poorly who plays Satan’s eight year old daughter.  She always either has a slight frown or a slight smile and as a result she looks so damn strange and not in a good way.  In some scenes she acts fine and in others she overacts and I gotta believe all this is the directors giving incoherent guidance to this little girl.  Plus the costume choices are questionable.  Like look at these ugly ass outfits they dress her in.

Overall Impressions: Yea, it’s definitely cheap and not particularly well shot or edited or scored or acted but what bothers me the most is they made the same fuckin’ movie for a third time.  This is more or less parts 1 and 2 except the demon child is a girl instead of a boy and the parent who does all the detective work is the mother instead of the father/uncle.

They leave no doubt that this is a direct sequel to part 3 but I guess it was a long enough gap in between films (ten years) that they went for a reboot-quel.  That doesn’t make the movie any less frustrating though because they still had an opportunity to try to find a different angle to the story and didn’t take it.  They don’t even pretend that all the terrible shit that happens could be a coincidence of bad luck.  No, this girl is the devil and she or some supernatural force helps her destroy any enemy that comes close to figuring out the truth.  Similar to the other films these evil powers could benefit from being more subtle as opposed to I dunno, squashing a dude with a swinging wrecking ball.  That’s a touch heavy handed if you ask me.  Does every adversary have to be murdered?  What if they went catatonic or were maimed in some way?  That doesn’t cut it?

There’s also the extremely abrupt ending like in part 2.  A build up of tension is gathered slowly and weakly for almost the entire run with the mother putting the bits together.  Then in the last five minutes there’s a sudden flurry of action (that you wish was spread more throughout) and then the credits roll.

So part 4 here is at the bottom of the ranks in the series.  From a technical standpoint it’s a little interesting because the flaws are kind of obvious so I was sort of engaged in picking out all the confounding terrible decisions.  Other than that it’s the same shit but done worse-er (pretty sure not a word) than before.

Harefooted Halloween: Omen III: The Final Conflict (aka The Final Conflict)

What I Liked: Sam Neill (In the Mouth of Madness) gives an understated performance for the most part that affords Damien a quiet menace.  You can tell there’s something creepy about this guy just beneath the surface but you can’t put your finger on exactly what.  In one particularly impressive scene Neill orates a long monologue in his shrine to Satan (a large empty dark room ornamented with a huge statue of Jesus on the cross except he’s nailed in reverse with the front of his body against the cross) that goes on for three and a half minutes with only one cut where he complains how vile Jesus is and how Hell is misunderstood and the real paradise.  It’s a bit melodramatic but effective.

I’ll give the filmmakers full credit for sticking to a plot about Damien searching for the recently born second coming and resorting to killing hundreds of babies (off camera).  The longer Jesus #2 is alive the weaker Damien grows so he doesn’t really have a choice if he wants to succeed in bringing about the end of the world.  It’s also refreshing that this storyline isn’t yet another installment of Damien simply preventing others from discovering who he really is.  He’s not so concerned with that this time because he’s already in charge of the monster conglomerate his uncle left him in the previous film and well on his way to amassing political power.  So I think he feels he’s kind of untouchable.  And who’s gonna buy he’s the antichrist anyway?  The accuser will sound like a loon.

What I Didn’t Like: While the story makes sense for an adult Damien to give himself an ambassadorship (he has the current ambassador to the UK kill himself in an overly elaborate suicide) as a stepping stone to the Senate and then eventually the White House it’s a little boring.  The mass baby homicide angle is audacious but it’s mostly talked about and kept off screen because well, you can’t actually show that shit and I know I sure as hell wouldn’t want to actually see that shit.  So it ends up being a lot of talking.  There’s another part of the story though that involves a group of priests getting ahold of the sacred daggers from the other films and they attempt to assassinate Damien.  Sounds cool right?  Unfortunately the execution isn’t great.  The priests come off sorta bumbling when they fail over and over.  These sections almost turn into a Wile E. Coyote cartoon where these fellas can’t even come close to getting the job done.

If you do the math this movie is supposed to take place in 2003 (the gap between part 2 and 3 is only three years but Damien jumps from age twelve to thirty two) but the filmmakers decided to ignore continuity by having it be then modern day late 70’s.  They make an effort to retcon this by saying Damien took over his uncle’s company seven years ago in 1971 which would make the current year 1978.  That means part 2 took place in 1958 and part 1 in 1953.  Would’ve been neat to see them give a go at a futuristic 2003 but alas they deny us.

Overall Impressions: We have another just fine Omen picture.  It’s not terribly exciting nor does it have an interesting visual style or contain much of anything that makes it stand out a great deal.  Sam Neill is the best thing about the movie where he delivers a pitch perfect performance for what the situation calls for.

And sadly it turns out I was correct about part 2 being unnecessary.  I know it would’ve felt weird to skip from Damien age five to age thirty two but nothing of any importance happens in those years.  What, his uncle finds out his true identity and doesn’t almost destroy him?  Yawn.  At least in this one he has real power and uses it to advance his scheme in an impactful way.  I won’t divulge if he succeeds or not though.

Harefooted Halloween: Damien: Omen II

What I Liked: Jonathan Scott-Taylor who plays tween aged Damien does a damn good job.  He puts on such an air of smugness you wanna strangle him.  His bratty whinny assholic disposition is perfect for the antichrist at this stage in the process because he hasn’t learned yet that charm is an important and potent ingredient to getting supporters on your side.  Scott-Taylor dances on what must’ve been a hard line to walk.  He’s trying to understand who he really is, how to deal with being pure evil but he also genuinely loves his aunt, uncle and cousin who raised him since age five so he’s actually a tirade of emotion and not devoid of it.  That was a nice decision.  Plus since he’s been living in the states since the events of the previous film he has a half British half American accent.  A good attention to detail that I wasn’t expecting.

What I Didn’t Like: There isn’t any mystery for us to solve this time.  It’s about Damien’s Uncle Richard (William Holden (The Bridge on the River Kwai)), brother of Gregory Peck’s character from the original, and others around him slowly discovering who this kid really is.  But we, the audience, know he’s the devil or the devil’s son or whatever so it isn’t that much fun for us.  The plot becomes mostly concerned with Damien and his henchmen (yes, multiple this round) bumping off folks who either discover the secret or come close to discovering it.  That’s ok but not too thrilling.

Damien has flat out supernatural abilities now similar to Carrie where he can kill people with his mind.  He also has strange invisible demonic forces and a raven to keep his path clear so he can continue on his merry way unobstructed.  This results in some Final Destination type deaths.  They’re not as fuckin’ ridiculous and elaborate as in those films but they’re in the same spirit.  You could chalk up everything that happens in the first picture to coincidence.  That movie heavily implies it’s not but they at least leave some room for doubt.  Here there’s no question.  When Damien causes a fireball to shoot out of nowhere or a train lever to switch into gear to start rolling down the tracks ambiguity is out the window.  That’s a sillier route to take.

This picture has the same issue as the first in that Damien and his cohorts needlessly attract attention to themselves by stacking up corpses.  Anyone that gets in their way boom, they’re dead.  Again, this tactic almost thwarts their plans for the apocalypse.  If they played it cooler and let more shit slide then Damien would come off like less of a weirdo and they’d have smoother sailing.

Unfortunately there’s no satisfying ending.  The build is soft where Uncle Richard takes a long time to realize what’s happening around him and then suddenly leaps to wanting to murder Damien.  So when it feels like things are finally starting to ramp up the movie just sorta stops.  The end point is logical on paper and they do throw in one final twist but it isn’t very impactful in practice.

Overall Impressions: This is basically a worse version of the original.  I mean it’s fine and watchable even if it is kinda sloppy in general.  There’s nothing about it that annoys me or insults me but at the same time there isn’t anything that excites me either.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the worst aspect of this entry is that it probably isn’t necessary.  We have two more sequels to explore in the series (along with the remake) and doing a pitstop to check in on Damien at age twelve seems redundant.  Let’s skip to him as an adult when he has much more autonomy over his life and decisions.  How will he navigate society with his diabolical powers and what path will he take to bring about the end of the world?  I would rather see that than an obnoxious kid showing up his teacher in history class by magically being able to rapid fire name any date in history that anything happened.  Funny scene but not exactly foreboding for your antichrist movie.

Harefooted Halloween: The Omen

What I Liked: Gregory Peck’s performance is very nicely done.  You can see how happy he is with his wife and new son and his career is going in the right direction and even though he’s perhaps a bit stuffy he’s on top of the world.  That is until the devil completely shatters his reality.  Then Peck has to show disbelief in all the bad shit that keeps happening around him, slow acceptance that he’s raising the antichrist and finally full commitment to murdering a five year old who he’s known and treated during that entire period as his son.  That’s a big swing and he kills it.  Peck was dealing with the suicide of his own son the year before and my guess is he gravitated toward this material as a way to work through his personal grief.  Between this and the audacious Boys From Brazil a couple of years later Peck was part of some wild projects during this time.

Most of the deaths are presented in kind of a blunt matter of fact way.  Especially the first one involving Damien’s nanny hanging herself in front of a pack of young children gathered for Damien’s fifth birthday party.  It comes out of nowhere with an exclamation point when the rope tugs and she smashes into the window behind her.  This movie has several famous death scenes but this is the one that creeps me out a tad.  And generally the camera doesn’t linger on the corpses either.  They’re like a flash of disturbance which may make them more impactful.

Damien doesn’t speak almost at all.  That keeps the kid much more peculiar and off putting.  If he said a bunch of bratty stuff and/or giggled all throughout he would simply be an annoying little shit not unlike many others you’ve seen before.  Having him dart these dagger eyes and ghoulishly display an occasional smile is more effective.

The filmmakers were smart about what to reveal when.  They could’ve kept the whole enchilada a secret until the end but it’s good we’re in the know from the top about Peck’s son dying right after being born and Damien being adopted.  That’s a decent weird enough history to fuel the majority of the run time.  There are still diabolic twists to be had so there’s room to expand.

While heavy handed the Oscar winning score by Jerry Goldsmith is undeniably badass.  You got a booming orchestra, a driving tempo and a chorus vigorously chanting in Latin.  Very ominous.

Spoiler on this last bit in case you managed to avoid how this forty five plus year old movie ends.  Kudos to the filmmakers for going with the downer ending.  I mean they had to, didn’t they?  They weren’t going to butcher a five year old in a mainstream picture so the only way to conclude the story is to let him live.  Maybe you could try to chain him up somehow or dispel him into the mystical unknown but director Richard Donner (16 Blocks) didn’t want overtly supernatural elements in here.  He wanted to cast enough uncertainty in your mind that this could all be Peck’s delusions.  However, I don’t think he succeeded terribly well in this regard because…

What I Didn’t Like: This isn’t a huge gripe but they leave absolutely no doubt that Damien is the devil’s offspring.  They could’ve made it more ambiguous mainly by severely scaling back the nanny character’s evil as fuck demeanor and behavior.  All the other shit is more coincidental or just plain strange.

To expand on the previous paragraph, if Damien and his nanny were more modest in their approach they wouldn’t arouse as much suspicion.  Their bloodlust and insistence on having their own way from the start almost fucks up the devil’s plans for world domination.  We’re talking about the big one here, Armageddon, the apocalypse, judgment day, etc.  You don’t wanna blow it.  So as a result they look a touch idiotic by not being able to control their malevolent urges.

Overall Impressions: The Omen is considered a classic and still rock solid after all these years.  I wouldn’t say it’s an absolute favorite of mine though due to some ham fisted execution.  With Damien’s scornful glares, how the nanny keeps directly disobeying her charge’s parents, the 666 birthmark and an over the top gothic score the film veers dangerously close to schlock territory a few times.  At the same time that’s sort of the appeal.  If it were too reserved it could get boring and if it were more gratuitous it could get cartoony.

Unavoidably this movie gets compared to The Exorcist which came out three years earlier.  They both share plots about a child either taken over by a demon or is perhaps the devil himself.  Another one you could throw into the mix is Rosemary’s Baby to round out your three shades of demonic kid pics.  Rosemary is more Hitchcockian where you have no idea if supernatural shit is afoot or if this poor woman is going crazy or is being abused or what.  The Exorcist is an extreme sorta gross out film that goes for shock value with nasty makeup effects and having a little girl say and do awful things.  So the devil is definitely real in that one and you witness what he’s capable of first hand.  Finally, The Omen is a mixture of the two.  It’s a down the middle horror thriller where they do everything they can to tell you this little boy is the antichrist without him actually doing anything nefarious.  The supernatural probably exists but it’s not clear.  It’s not as outrageous but not as silly as The Exorcist and not as mysterious but not as indirect as Rosemary’s Baby.

And we need that straight shooter.  I like The Omen.  It’s pretty good.

Scream Series Wrap Up

Aside from the original these frickin’ Screams aren’t what I expected or remembered exactly.  They’re all the same goddamn movie to kind of a criminal degree.  With that said there are a few items we should discuss before wrapping this shit up.

One question at the top though, how did Ghostface come to be called Ghostface?  In the first and second films the Halloween costume the killers use is labeled Father Death on the package.  It’s curious that this name wasn’t adopted by the fans, although Ghostface does sound cooler.  Well according to the internet Rose McGowan in the first film uses the term Ghostface and I guess it stuck with the community because as far back as I can remember this is what anyone has ever called this character.  There’s a loose The Shape/Michael Myers connection here with the villain having multiple names and the fans choosing for the world which prevails.

Ok, a very silly trademark of the series is Ghostface’s pratfalls.  When he takes a spill look out, he goes flying.  And don’t be fooled, this is the movie laughing AT the character and I don’t care for it that much.  I wish the stumbles weren’t so cartoonish and happen so often.  You could argue this makes sense because it’s hard to see in the mask and your mobility is somewhat limited in the full costume and I buy that to an extent.  If he gets tripped up for a moment that’s ok but having him go airborne and land on his ass almost every time is too much.

And this leads to another aspect that I kinda scratch my head over which is the insistence that these films are part comedy.  Part 3 is perhaps the closest but overall this sentiment doesn’t exactly come across.  It’s probably all the meta stuff they’re referring to but not all of it lands.  Plus the way these are shot and edited doesn’t imply setup, joke, setup, joke.  It’s presented straight up like you would expect.  In the end there isn’t that much more comic relief than your normal horror picture.  So I always thought it was weird when the filmmakers talk about the series like it’s a yuck a minute with intermittent deadly serious slayings.

Ghostface is played by someone different (or multiple people) in every movie making him fairly unique in the slasher realm.  He’s not a supernatural entity like Jason or Freddy and he’s not supposed to be the same person like Michael Myers and he’s not a possessed creature like Chucky.  He’s a new guy in the costume each time out.  Of course this poses a problem because it seems every other person Sidney comes across is utterly insane with an unquenchable bloodlust.

In each episode it’s revealed at the end that there are two killers working together to terrorize their victims.  The only time they diverge from this is in 3 where one guy flies solo.  The novelty of a dastardly duo is refreshing the first time but gets tiresome quickly.  They should’ve played with this more instead of almost always sticking with a pair of slayers.

The killers are extremely tech savvy too.  One of the big things they do is clone other people’s cell phones to lure victims into traps.  I wouldn’t have a problem with this gag if they didn’t use it so damn much.  The sequels especially lean on this crutch to manipulate characters to get them where they need to be too often.  However, by far the heaviest use of this cheap trick is in the TV show (we’ll get there).  None of the characters ever wise up to this shit either.  You’d think across five movies they would get leery about the texts and emails they receive but nope, the authenticity of any message is never questioned.  Thankfully the magical voice changer from 3 that can alter your speech to sound exactly like anyone else’s is the one and only time that stupid thing shows up.

Moving on, the first film has a rich backstory that’s hinted at and explored somewhat in the first sequel.  Syndey’s mother was murdered by someone who’s sitting on death row due to Sidney’s eye witness testimony.  Turns out it wasn’t him.  I’m not saying I need that movie but well, that’s a movie.  To go that far with a character’s past is impressive and usually relegated to personal notes between the actor and director.  This easily could’ve been left out because it’s not crucial to the motive of the killers.  Billy Loomis is angry because Sidney’s mom caused his parents marriage to break up so he kills her (offscreen).  Fine.  But having a third party erroneously take the fall for her murder isn’t necessary.  It could be an unsolved case and Sidney could still be pissed at Gale over how she covered the story.  Anyway, I love that they went the extra mile to officially make it a part of Sidney’s DNA.  A lesser film would’ve balked at the idea.

Speaking of Sidney, man, she has some of the worst goddamn luck in the world.  Killers keep finding her.  Over five movies she faces no less than nine multiple murdering psychopaths which is like kind of a lot (two of them are blood relatives of Sidney no less).  I guess this is her plight for fingering the wrong guy who she thought murdered her mother?  She must endure a lifetime of numerous maniacs who want to turn her life into a living hell and her body into Swiss cheese?  Sure that’s a bad thing that happened but it wasn’t malicious, it was a mistake.  Damn.

Perhaps the only other person who gets it worse is Dewey.  This sonuvabitch gets stabbed badly in 1 causing nerve damage and then gets stabbed again in 2 in an even more brutal fashion.  Then in 3 he gets sliced in the arm and the crap beat out of him by Ghostface including various blows to the head and a tumble down the stairs.  In 4 he takes the least amount of damage but still gets knocked around with a nasty metal bedpan hit to the skull.  Additionally there’s the emotional turmoil he has to deal with in each installment over his love/hate relationship with Gale.  Mercifully in 5 Ghostface finally guts this fucker and boots him out of the franchise for good.  Jeez.

And all this shit, all the murders and deception and everything, stem from Sidney’s mother, Maureen, sleeping around with a bunch of guys.  Like fifty fuckin’ people die because of this!  And the franchise is still going!  What?!  That begs the question then of why does anyone besides Maureen need to die?  What do all the other victims have to do with her promiscuousness?  Not a damn thing really.  The sequels sure as hell don’t make sense in this regard and not even the wonderful original adds up if you think about it for more than half a minute.  Maureen’s daughter, Maureen’s daughter’s friends and the high school principal need to die because she was boinking some dude(s) on the side?  Why?

Weirdly as the narrative continues to unfold across the films it only gets less interesting despite some Saw level plot reveal zaniness (not counting the TV show which has its own universe of whacked out bends in the path).  Here’s my vote for the two craziest twists.  One is the introduction of Sidney’s long lost brother in 3 who Maureen got pregnant with during a search for stardom in Hollywood in the 70’s (it’s unclear if she was raped or not).  And, hold on to your hats, turns out this asshole nutjob sibling orchestrated the events of the first film from behind the scenes.  Sheeeeit.  Smash cut to eleven years later in 4 and Sidney’s niece is a fuckin’ lunatic with a grand plan of taking over the spotlight from Sidney by killing her and pretending to be the lone survivor of a new round of murders.  The two end up hashing it out in the ICU while recovering from life threatening injuries.  Sidney uses a defibrillator to zap her opponent’s head as a stopgap then shoots her in the chest.  I know you’re thinking these turns sound amazing but the repetitive tediousness of the other ninety five percent of the runtime makes me not care by the time we hit the finale.

Watching all the Screams in a row like this was eye opening.  Sadly my ultimate takeaway is this is kind of a shitty franchise honestly.  The original has earned its masterpiece status for sure.  I don’t think anyone’s gonna argue with that.  Those sequels though, woof.  None of them are very good which makes me think the whole thing has been coasting on the genius, success and now nostalgia of that first one.  Other horror franchises get flack for being the same thing over and over but at least the Fridays, Nightmares, Halloweens, Chainsaws and the like have either awesome visual style, vivid characters, unusual intriguing stories, supernatural elements, incredible effects work, kick ass production design or hugely entertaining performances.  It’s difficult to create a continuing saga for the Screams because the sequels don’t contain any of that.  They’re totally straight forward horror whodunit pictures that take place in the real world with a sorta goofy Scooby Doo quality to them when the killer finally takes off the mask to unveil him/herself.  I think the sequels would’ve worked better if they were episodic and involved a different set of characters with a new backstory and scenario each time.  But guess what?  They kinda did that.

In carrying out my due diligence I watched the entirety of the TV show that ran from 2015-2019 for MTV and VH1.  The first two seasons follow the same characters but the third is a completely new cast of characters and setting.  The structure and feel is one hundred percent identical to the films except the character names and town name are different and for seasons one and two the killer’s mask is an alternate design (they went back to original recipe Ghostface for season three).  This is the format they should’ve gone with all along for the sequels.  The inane stories are bad fan fiction soap opera bullshit anyway so at least now we’re in the right medium.  And didn’t the biggest soaps back in the day have a murder mystery storyline at some point in their decades long run?  Think about it, in every Scream sequel there’s a killer on the loose, a large pool of suspects, everyone is related to everyone else somehow, most characters have a hidden secret, new family members are produced out of thin air when the plot gets stuck, it’s perfect.  Stretching the killer’s exceptionally overcomplicated idiotic plan over ten or so smaller bites works better than condensing it down to two hours.  If you’re a fan of these movies you’ll probably dig the show.  It’s trashy and absurd and filled to the brim with drama and it gets surprisingly gory.  It’s so much more enjoyable than the sequels.

But Scream’s legacy is long and remains firmly in the cinematic realm for its core audience.  It’s touched a lot of people at this point and (somewhat puzzlingly) has cemented itself as a titan among horror franchises.  There’s more to come too and unfortunately shows no signs of peeling off the mask, putting down the knife and becoming an actual ghost.  It makes me wanna yell loudly in a shrieking manner.