I'm back! And I'm beginning to wonder if I am getting jaded. In an attempt to get the Dracula's Godchild party started, I've so far watched 3.5 horror films, and not one, in my opinion, deserves its own standalone review.
Let me repeat something I've said throughout the horror-movie portions of this blog: I am a high-strung person who loves fiction. I am, in theory, the ideal audience for all but the most tepid of tepid spook-shows. I can suspend disbelief so high it can barely be seen with the naked eye. My surprise, therefore, is less that there are non-great horror movies out there as that they are so non-great that even I noticed.
So here we go...
--Knife Edge: A stockbroker with ESP quits the fast track and moves with her husband and son into a haunted house. Soon, she is seeing visions of a terrible murder from the past and is drawn to a particularly sinister tree on the estate.
Unfortunately, that's as far as I got. It may be that reading Barbara Erskine's House of Echoes a few months ago used up some vital attention span for British haunted-house/domestic dramas. I'm not willing to blame the movie for this, though, and I may yet return to it.
--The Haunted Forest: Nice name, isn't it? It also has nice scenery as a bunch of attractive young people get lost in the woods on a quest for a(nother) sinister tree. Imagine someone using a "Native American Legend" as an excuse to make a J-horror movie in what looks like a forest in Oregon.
Got it? I've just saved you about 90 minutes. You're welcome.
--The Marsh: This was probably my favorite so far: Gabrielle Anwar stars as a children's-book writer who sees visions of a house in he country. Until the movie started, she's been using this to fuel her work, which is shown as adorably creepy picture books I wouldn't mind getting for my godchildren in real life. When she tracks down the real house and rents it for a sabbatical, creepy things start to happen... as, unfortunately, does the unnecessary insertion of Forest Whitaker as a psychic investigator. Pretty good and spooky, though.
--Walled In: If I had a time machine, I might just go back and put Walled In on the list I made, at the dawn of this site, of movies that infuriate me due to unfulfilled potential. Mischa Barton (who is quite good here) stars as a demolition expert doing the initial inspection on an apartment building where people were buried alive in the walls—a plot point that only serves to remind me that I know a lot of morbid little bits of lore that other people don't. As she navigates the building and its strange few remaining tenants, she begins to have eerie experiences....
Which makes it all the more disappointing that the end of the film is a sort of torture-porn lite. The set pieces were so good, the atmosphere was so good, and it all ends with someone trapped in what amounts to a cellar by a still-living doofus. Phooey.
Next up: Book of Blood, if I can stand it.
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