The Innkeepers

Last night I watched The Innkeepers on amazon prime.   I was excited.  I have noticed a new trend towards more classic ghost stories and haunting stories and have been really thrilled about several movies I have seen in trailers lately.   The Innkeepers is the story of two young hotel clerks who are left in charge with running a hotel on its last weekend before it shuts down.  The hotel is said to be haunted by a woman named Katherine O'Malley who hung herself after she was jilted by her fiance.   The two clerks are ghost enthusiasts.   They have tried to find ghosts in the hotel before and even have a website.  They decide to give it one last go before the hotel closes down because the hotel is almost completely empty.  

The movie began very slowly.  There was a tremendous amount of character development.  Normally, I salute a steady ramping up of tension through character development and atmosphere.   This movie certainly tried to do this.  However,  the characters weren't overly interesting so I found myself getting a little bored by this in the Innkeepers.   It got so bad, I played scrabble on my phone after a while. When the ghosts finally started to appear, they were kept mostly in the shadows.   This was very well done.  After the slow start, the actual haunting portions of this film wasn't that bad.    Overall, The Innkeeper was an alright film.  It wasn't great, but I think I might have rated this movie lower than it might be to others because my expectations were so high.  I was really looking forward to this atmospheric ghost story.  Oh well,  I am going to see The Woman in Black tonight and maybe that one will bring a few more chills and I won't play scrabble through it.

Movie Review: Insidious

I love horror movies.  I love b-grade horror movies and classics and everything in between.  On most occasions,  I realize the horror movie I love doesn't meet any standard criteria of quality.  It can't be measured along good films like Black Swan.  It enters its own category of magic and wonder that can only be appreciated by fans of the genre.  A few horror movies like The Exorcist and Silence of the Lambs are good enough to be measured amongst other good movies.   Insidious is one of those films.  It is a very good film that hearkens back to the old classic haunting movies to use subtly and foreshadowing to create so much tension the teenage girls behind me squealed with terror.

The plot of Insidious is a simple one.  A family moves into a new home.  The children are afraid of their rooms and things move about on their own.  The family assumes it is one of the many children making mischief.  Almost immediately, the middle son falls into an inexplicable coma that he stays in for months.  The longer the boy is in a coma, the worse the paranormal activity around the house becomes.  Terrifying ghosts are everywhere and the wife is alone in her belief in this activity.  Finally the family moves, but the ghosts follow and after a psychic enters the picture, the family realizes there are worse things than the legion of ghosts following the little boy.

Insidious was also interesting in the unique perspective it presented on hauntings.  I don't want to ruin anything for those that haven't seen the film, but it presents a description of ghosts and demons and the way they relate to the world of the living that I haven't heard before.  It integrates notions of astral projection and psychic projection with a unique view on the ether that philosophically left me with much to think about.  It also presented to of the most comical and interesting ghost hunting characters I've seen in movies since The Ghost Busters.  It was also very scary.  As  a mother, watching a little boy tormented by ghosts and demons was horrible and probably my worst nightmare.  This is the best and scariest horror movie I've seen in years.

The Rite

Exorcism based films, books, and movies have become very popular over the last few years.   The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Last Exorcist, And Exorcist Tells His Tale, have all been popular.  Due to the rising interest in exorcisms and exorcists the Vatican has gone so far as to open their files revealing video and  tapes of the many exorcisms they've performed.   Discovery Channel will be doing a new television show based on the Vatican's files.

The Rite is one of the many films on the topic of exorcists and exorcisms and it is unique in that it is a little more realistic than the other possession films I've seen.  The Rite is based on a book of the same name written by a priest.   The story is the story of one of 14 US based exorcists.  It is the story of his journey through faith to remain a priest and become an exorcist.  This movie was almost universally panned by critics despite a wonderful performance by Anthony Hopkins as the older exorcist who has been worn thin by too many years in the presence of demons.    The young priest, the protagonist, is apprenticed to Anthony Hopkins and participates in a couple of exorcisms with him.  These exorcisms are mellow by our pea soup spitting standards and the young priest remains unconvinced there is anything but severe mental illness at work in the two possessed victims.  However, after the older priest becomes possessed the young priest rediscovers his faith and comes to believe in demons.

Whatever the critcs may say, I enjoyed this movie very much.  It wasn't as violent or spectular as other movies in this genre, but it makes up for that in realism.  What is most terrifying about his movie to me is that is is based on a true story.  The events in the movie were witnessed by a journalist who reported and confirmed the events in the movie.  No one's head spins around and there is no pea soup, but the victims live in constant fear and terror and are haunted by relentlessly hateful spirits that are more terrifying than most of the other depictions I've seen.  I also watched The Last Exorcism this weekend and the two movies were a stark contrast to me.  The Last Exorcism was a slow attempt at realism that became silly and laughable at the end and The Rite maintained its tone and texture well.

Reviewing Paranormal Activity 2

There were moments during Paranormal Activity in which I was sitting on the edge of my seat.  I didn't know what was going to happen and there was a realness to the characters that made the events scary.  The movie was well paced and slowly built up to its inevitable climax with enough action and interest to make it a good movie.  I liked Paranormal Activity.  It did something new and it did it well.

Paranormal Activity 2 I did not like.  They tried to up the stakes and make it more compelling by putting a baby in the mix.  It was the baby's soul on the line and that should have made it more terrifying, but the build up was too slow.  The characters were realistic, but they were too realistic.  For fifty percent of this movie, I felt like I was being forced to watch someone else's bad home movies.  I can hardly stand watching my own family's home movies why would I watch someone else's?  The action was so slow I checked my ipone scrabble games while I waited for something, anything to happen.  They showed the same security camera shots of the pool, the front steps, the living room over and over again and you kept expecting something to happen, but nothing did and by the time something did happen I was so numb I didn't care.  What?  The demon finally dragged the mom off?  Well thank God for that.  I was getting sleepy.

So my final take on this sequel is that I really wasted seven dollars on Friday night.   I know some people loved this film, but it really lost me. The scariest part of this movie was the preview for Burlesque.  I'll be having nightmares about that for weeks.

Case 39 Review

Halloween is the season for candy, haunted houses, costumes, and of course, scary movies!  I started my scary movie marathon with Case 39, an excellent horror movie staring Renee Zellweger as a social worker fighting to save children from difficult home environments.   I have to say, I'm a little biased because this movie hit very close to home for me.  I spent 2 years working as an  in home therapist for children at risk from being removed from the home by DHR.  I felt the main character's suffering and related to her and the therapist's and psychologists that ran the children's groups profoundly.  It is a hard job and often you lose more than you win in the battles to save children from their environment.

Case 39 gives you a character who is fighting this battle every day and is desperate to win and save the world one child at a time.  She is overworked and under paid and on top of her huge caseload she gets another client, case 39.   The main character relates to this case more than any other and goes above and beyond the call of duty to save a little girl from parents that clearly want to kill her.  When the system fails,  she enlists one of her close friends on the police force to save the girl and they find her parents trying to put the sleeping child into an oven.

Of course, our sweet, tragic girl is not what she seems.   It isn't long after Rene takes the tragic child in before the children on Rene's caseload begin to have horrible things happen to them.  It isn't just the children.  All those around her begin to die or suffer worse fates than death.  Case 39 was a good movie that I wouldn't mind seeing again.  It is definitely a good start to my Halloween horror fest!

The Top Ten Best Ghost/Haunting Movies

I did a lot of research before I came up with this list.  I read many other lists of the top ten best ghost movies and reviewed my favorites and their merits.  I have to say that one thing I learned reviewing so  many of these lists is that these lists are all very different and because of that I admit that this is my subjective judgment on the matter.  The top five on my list are movies that were present on almost every list I reviewed.

10.   The House on Haunted Hill 

  
         
9.   Poltergeist

    

                                              

8.  The Ring 

                                            
7.  Ghostbusters  

                                             

6.   The Grudge     

                                            
5.  The Orphanage   

                                           


4.  Beetlejuice      

                                          
3.   The Others    

                                         
2.  The Shinning

1. The Haunting (1963)