The Babysitter: Killer Queen

 "The Babysitter: Killer Queen" (2020, McG, Netflix, Wonderland Sound & Vision, Boies/Schiller Film Group) is the sequel to 2017's "The Babysitter".

Judah Lewis reprises his role as Cole, now 2 years older and a bit of a social pariah, having shared his story of the eventful night with Bee (Samara Weaving) and her murderous pals with friends and family... No one believes him, of course. 

An unusual new girl called Phoebe (Jenna Ortega) joins the school who catches Cole's eye, but she seems to have her own problems.

On learning that he is being enrolled in a special school by his parents, Cole runs off with his friend Melanie (Emily Alyn Lind) and her pals for a party. Everything seems to be going as awkwardly as he anticipated until... tables turn and, with the help of Phoebe, he finds himself once again pitted against the odds. 

A fun follow up to the original that continues in a similar style with tongue-in-cheek tropes and a weirdly paced sense of humour. The action remains fun, gory and cartoonish and there are many familiar faces from the first film. However, liking the first film may not necessarily mean this one will tick your boxes; taking the plot out of one location does widen the scope of the story, but does in some respects make it feel a little more disjointed and less neat than the original film.

[Image: Netflix, et al]

Hani

Ghost Story

"Ghost Story" (1981, John Irvin, Universal Pictures) is a ghostly tale about shared secrets... It's based on a Peter Straub novel



Four well-off elderly men, Ricky Hawthorne (Fred Astaire), Dr. John Jaffrey (Melvyn Douglas), Mayor Edward Charles Wanderley (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and Sears James (John Houseman) are members of the Chowder Society. They meet to share chilling tales and enjoy a tipple together. But when one of Edward's sons dies in a mysterious accident, it becomes apparent that the Chowder society share a dark secret, and that secret is clawing its way back to them.



A fairly traditional horror with spooky scenes, old creaky houses and a grim little twist in the plot. We are treated to some interesting death scenes including a rather explicit, nude window fall (helicoptering did not seem to help) and quite a sad and melancholy plummet from a bridge.


Our protagonist, Don Wanderley (Craig Wasson), attempts to work out what plagues his fathers' group and family, while also battling his father's contempt for his lifestyle, status and choices. But it is the secretive and elegant society marred with darkness that holds the most interest in the film.


Beautiful scenery and a good cast keep this relatively simple plot going. The film delivers a surprising amount of action, despite the collective age of the main cast. I found it to be old fashioned but entertaining. The film suffers overall from a slightly anticlimactic final act, but a nicely realised final reveal that brings everything to a tidy and complete end.

[Image: Universal Pictures]

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Girl on the Third Floor

*Spoiler warning*

"Girl on the Third Floor" (2019, Travis Stevens, Queensbury Pictures) is a haunted house story.

Don (CM Punk) is attempting to renovate an old and dilapidated house for he, his wife, Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn), and their impending new arrival. As Liz ties up their affairs in the city, Don takes their dog and moves in to the house with his tools and an endless supply of beer. But things in the house aren't quite... right. Strange substances and sweets keep appearing, Don constantly feels like he's being watched and a very flirty stranger called Sarah (Sarah Brooks) won't stay away. He's also receiving strange vibes from the local pastor, Sadie (Elissa Dowling) and seems to be extremely unpopular at the local watering hole/bowling alley.

When he's joined by his friend, Milo (Travis Delgado), things change up a gear and it becomes apparent that the house, or something within it, wants them all out. Or worse...

I'd heard good things about this film and went in open minded and keen for a good spookfest. I'd first say that the set up is overly long. The scenes are well shot, but there are a lot of scenes of Don doing various DIY-ing without anything spooky happening so when the spooky stuff comes along it felt a little long winded. On the other hand, we get a good feel for the kind of character Don is and his less than savoury past and nature. There are also several well done shots where the various old mirrors around the house reveal some creepy happenings which I found to be very effective.

Whenever I see a dog in a movie I know it's not going to be around for long, and spoiler or not, poor old puppy does not last the duration.

The reveal and finale were fun but felt like a completely different film to the first half and didn't meld particularly well. Overall, I enjoyed myself but the film is very slow burning and took its time getting any actual plot started.

[Image: Queensbury Pictures]

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Annabelle Comes Home

"Annabelle Comes Home" (2019, Gary Dauberman, New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster Productions, The Safran Company, Warner Bros. Pictures) is the seventh film in The Conjuring Universe created by James Wan and is the third feature film centred around the haunted doll, Annabelle, whom we were introduced to in the original The Conjuring and who is based on an actual case by the real life Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Starting from the doll being taken from the young nurses in the first Conjuring film, we follow her home to Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) Warren's locked room full of other haunted artefacts. Some time later, the Warren's daughter, Judy (McKenna Grace), is being babysat by family friend, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) and her friend, Daniela (Katie Sarife). Unfortunately, it turns out that Daniela had other, more personal reasons for tagging along and she breaks into the artefact room searching for a way to contact the spirit of her father. Unwittingly touching everything and anything she can lay her hands on, Daniela also releases Annabelle from her blessed case allowing the doll to wreak havoc on herself, Judy, Mary Ellen and Mary Ellen's admirer, Bob (Michael Cimino) who had come to the house to serenade Mary Ellen in a badly timed attempt at seduction.

A really fun entry into a series that I feel was getting pretty tired. The very limited setting of the Warren's house makes for a good old fashioned spook house feel and the scare scenes are, in usual Wan style, well portrayed and effective. The fact that Annabelle is given the power to raise other spirits nearby makes the variety of ghosts attacking the teens and kid pretty diverse. Personally, I enjoyed the first Conjuring but felt a little cold on the subsequent films, but I found this film to be a fun ride and the first, since the original film, to spark some life back into the creepy little doll despite the doll herself getting very limited screen time. It's jumpy and a little silly - just what I wanted out a spooky doll film.

[Image: New Line Cinema, et al]

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Haunter

"Haunter" (2013, Vincenzo Natali, Wild Bunch, IFC Midnight) is a haunted house story with a slant.


Lisa (Abigail Breslin) is a teenager in 1985. She's also dead. Lisa 'lives' in her house with her mum (Michelle Nolden), dad (Peter Outerbridge) and little brother, Robbie (Peter DaCunha) who appear unaware that they are also dead. Lisa's stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque timeloop of the same day; the car is always broken, the laundry is always needing done, dinner is always the same...


When Lisa becomes aware of her predicament, she tries to highlight it to her family but they seem to be oblivious to their situation. Lonely and angry, Lisa begins to try to find out what is going on. She starts to find clues and discovers that she is the ghost haunting the teenager, Olivia (Eleanor Zichy) now living in her room in 2013. To add to this, there may be a sordid history in the house and many other ghosts trapped there... Can Lisa stop it before Olivia's family are doomed to be next?!


A fun little film with a good performance from all of the cast, but especially from Breslin who is a sympathetic protagonist but also a strong character. She manages to walk the line of moody teenager and girl-in-peril without coming across as whiny or overbearing.


While the plot is fairly straightforward and the antagonist suffers from some confusing scenes throughout; the overall film is entertaining and creates an engaging atmosphere. The repetitive nature of the timeloop is something that has been done extremely well before (the previously mentioned Groundhog Day) and since (Happy Death Day). "Haunter" manages this timeloop fairly well also, with slight tweaks in the loop to show progression and just enough repetition to highlight what's going on. It also captures some elements reminiscent of the Amityville House.


"Haunter" nicely tells the tale from the ghost's perspective without getting too caught up in the ghost mythos, and delivers an intriguing little mystery. It's fairly light on the scares, however.

[Image: IFC Midnight, et al]

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Gothika

I decided to give this one another shot as part of my Robert Downey Jr. appreciation 'month' (this has so far lasted 3 months and looks not to be ending anytime soon. That man is a gift.). My first and last viewing of this film was at a house party in 2005 and I remember being pretty unimpressed at the time. But I was a cocky 17 year old, so lets see how it fares this time:




"Gothika" (2003, Mathieu Kassovitz, Dark Castle Entertainment, Warner Bros. Pictures, Columbia Pictures) is a film about a psychiatrist who wakes up to find herself a patient in the mental hospital she works at.


Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) works at Woodward Penitentiary as a Criminal Psychiatrist. She is working with several disturbed and violent women including Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz). She's also the wife of Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles S. Dutton) who runs the facility, and has an apparent friendship-but-nothing-more relationship with her colleague Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.) - much to the latter's disappointment.


On a stormy night, Dr. Grey crashes her car on a bridge while narrowly missing hitting a young girl standing in the road. When the Dr. approaches the girl to check if she's ok she bursts into flames. Miranda doesn't remember anything else until she wakes up as a patient at Woodward herself and Pete breaks the news to her that she apparently went home and brutally murdered Douglas.


Miranda spends the rest of the film slowly piecing together her memory with the help of a vengeful spirit and some pretty inefficient security in the hospital. What she finds out shakes her worldview and it's probably for the best that she'd already dispatched of Douglas.


The film suffers from a lot of things that aren't its fault. The main one being it's just another early 2000s teen-aimed horror with that annoying blue tinged hue over every scene. But there remain some gaping plot holes (really? Pete just pulls some strings and she's kept at her previous place of work? I don't think so) and just too much going on in the plot. It's like they made a few storyboards and decided to mash it all together; crooked cops, crooked doctors, malpractice, ghosts, murder, torture porn, revenge, amnesia, sexual deviants getting access to patients without (supposedly) anyone knowing, misrepresented mental health patients.... you name it, it's in here. It's a bit of a mess plot-wise.


One of my main gripes with the film is its criminal(-ly insane) underuse of its talented cast. Halle Berry as the protagonist gets a fair share of screen time but most of her time is spent screaming and/or being sedated so her character isn't given much depth outside of her initial intro as overworked psychiatrist who likes to swim. As the film moves on she gets to deliver a more proactive role and starts to do her own sleuthing, but ghostly possession, or not, I doubt that she would be set free at the end of the film, having, you know, murdered a guy! RDJ manages to inject some depth into the character of Pete through that amazing ability he possesses to humanise all of his characters, but essentially Pete is just there to be a hindrance to Miranda's escape and doesn't actually get to do much of note from a plot perspective except moon over Miranda and then act as jailor. Cruz' character is probably the most interesting of the film with a pretty sad story arc but she's more of a plot device than a main character.


But it's not all bad. The film remains watchable, and although it doesn't fit into any good-bad-cheese list it's also not so terrible that you can't sit through it. Whether  you'd actually want to is another question entirely. I can imagine the trope-laden, well trodden ideas behind the film still seeming fresh to the young and uninitiated, and it could certainly serve as a gateway to youngish, thirsty horror fans in the making who haven't yet been enticed by the pleasures of 2001's "Thirteen Ghosts" or 1999's "House on Haunted Hill" which, in my view, deliver a much better late 90s/early 2000s horror vibe.


What can I say? I came for the RDJ factor... and I pretty much stayed around for that, too. It seems 17 year old me and 31 year old me aren't so different after all.

[Image: Warner Bros., et al]

Hani

Nightmare Castle

"Nightmare Castle" (1965, Mario Caiano, Cinematografica Emmeci) is a fun black and white Italian horror riddled with well trodden tropes and perfect for scratching a gothic horror itch. It's maybe not the best Italian horror of the time, but it's certainly worth viewing and will appeal to many fans of the genre.

Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Meuller) is a mad scientist living in the grand ancestral castle home of his gorgeous and gothic wife, Muriel (Barbara Steele). Muriel, however, is having a steamy affair with their gardener, David. Upon catching the pair mid-embrace in the greenhouse, Stephen flies into a rage and beats the gardener before chaining both of them up and torturing them to death.

Using mad science (it's very different from normal science), Stephen then uses the blood of his victims to give his elderly servant, Solange, youth, turning her into the beautiful Helga Liné. Stephen and Solange then begin a relationship of their own, while the souls of Muriel and David are trapped in the castle by the their disembodied hearts skewered within an urn in the main hall.

To his dismay, however, Stephen learns that he was not Muriel's heir and that the castle has passed to her stepsister Jenny (also Barbara Steele) who currently resides in a mental institution. Seeing an opportunity, Stephen quickly marries the poor girl and drags her to the castle to live with him and Solange while he continues both his experiments and the affair with Solange.

Jenny begins to feel terrified, claiming to hear the spirits in the castle and beginning to take on the characteristics of her dear departed half sister. Finding Jenny's behaviour uncomfortable, and keen to declare her insane (but still married) so he can have his cake and eat it, Stephen calls for Jenny's doctor, Dr. Derek Joyce (Marino Masé) to the castle to treat her. However, the Dr. begins to suspect that there are supernatural forces at work and accidentally releases the vengeful spirits of the dead lovers to wreak havoc on those who wronged them!

Critics of the time considered this film to be too tropey. They threw around words like 'pedestrian' and 'obvious'. And while I can appreciate that the film certainly contains a lot of characteristics prevalent in many horrors from that period, it does so with a charm and clarity that many other films were devoid of. The drama between the characters is well achieved, and the strange and mostly undeveloped sub-plot of rejuvenating youth aside, the plot moves on at a good pace.

Barbara Steele gives us two very distinct characters with the sultry vixen Muriel being the antithesis of her nervous and pure stepsister, Jenny. We are also treated to a period clothing undressing scene that would put many a modern burlesque performer to shame.

The film also boasts some practical effects that still stand well to the modern viewer and a convincing entrance for our ghostly characters upon their release from the urn. While it's unlikely to have you shaking in your boots, it certainly has an ethereal and atmospheric charm that is exactly what I'm looking for in a gothic horror.

If you're looking for a Halloween warm-up film available to stream on Amazon you could do a lot worse than a visit to this drama-filled stately home set in Rome.

[Image: Cinematografica Emmeci]

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Winchester

"Winchester" aka "Winchester: The House that Ghosts Build" (2018, The Spierig Brothers, Bullitt Entertainment, Diamond Pictures, Imagination Design Works) tells the curious tale of Sarah Winchester, based-on-real-events.

Sarah Winchester (Dame Helen Mirren) is the heiress to the Winchester repeating firearms company. After the death of her husband and child she became more and more reclusive, believing herself to be haunted by the spirits of people killed by her company's products. She employs construction crews around the clock constantly changing and developing her house into a mysterious manor full of twists and turns and doors which lead to nowhere. A house which was later to be referred to as the Winchester Mystery House.

Eric Price (Jason Clarke) is a doctor whom the management of the Winchester company employ to declare Winchester unfit to own controlling shares in the organisation. While Price is suffering from him own troubles, and a penchant for laudanum, he decides to give Winchester a fair assessment, staying with her for a week and letting her tell her story.

The film delivers one or two effective jump scares, and a bounty of beautiful set designs. It boasts a talented cast, who deliver a perfectly acceptable performance, and it tells the tale of one of the most intriguing buildings in existence. However, it seems that this film has been universally panned. Could it be that primarily American audiences are too immature to appreciate a film that is at its core (and not exactly subtly) anti-gun? Or is it something else? I'd like to believe that there is more to horror viewers than their personal politics, so I'm going to focus on areas where I felt the film was lacking.

Despite the intricate scenery of the film (including some shots of the actual house) and a few well executed jump scares there was very few scary moments after the halfway mark. After the big reveal of the nature of the more deadly of spirits lurking around the house, the film began to be a little too liberal about showing us all. A little more mystery in the Mystery House may have kept viewers more on-side.

Price's backstory added a somewhat unnecessary link into the plot which I felt was more heavily focused on than our main story. Unlike the "Annabelle" side plot of "The Conjuring" which acted as a thrilling sidebar to develop the characters, Price's story becomes more involved than Winchester's. Although I did enjoy his story and his period drug abuse to an extent, it felt almost as if our titular character's story was of lesser concern.

All in all, the film suffered from being both slow and showing too much to the point where all tension was lost.

[Image: Bullitt Entertainment]

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Kanika

"Kanika" aka "कनिका" (2017, Pushkar Manohar, Ankit (Sunshine)) is a supernatural revenge horror from India. It is in Marathi language and is available with English subtitles.


Kaushik (Sharad Ponkshe) is a well-off doctor working in his own hospital. He is greedy and happy to flaunt laws in order to receive more money. After his security guard leaves, citing ghosts, Kaushik begins to see the spectre of a little girl haunting him. Soon, he begins to lose friends and colleagues under mysterious circumstances. His wife, Vaishali (Chaitrali Gupte) begins to worry that her husband has lost his mind... The little girl is after revenge, but possibly death is too quick?


The film covers a very polarising subject: abortion. It's a subject that can be difficult to understand across different cultures, genders, religions and social circles. Within different groups, issues with the subject can vary greatly. The main theme behind this film is to shine a light on the practice in the region of terminating pregnancies because of the gender of the child and its resultant social standing. In the case described within the plot, the mother did not want to do this and thus, a vengeful ghost is born.


I have not had as many opportunities to watch Indian horror as I have Japanese, European and American. The film is fairly low-budget with a few plot holes and some long winded dialogue, but it does have a certain charm to it. Our protagonist (or maybe he's the real antagonist?), Kaushik, is a fairly unlikeable person; A greedy and cowardly man who displays some fairly humorous behaviour in his attempt to save himself. There's also a scene with a treadmill where they made the actor mime walking which was decidedly distracting.


Kanika herself has a few good moments where she appears in different places, and similarly to the vengeful spirits within The Grudge and Ring franchises, her appearance is bedraggled with hair covering her face. There are a few scenes where she's not used as effectively and her story does not reach a fully satisfying conclusion.


All in all, the film is fairly low impact. It's not scary enough to make it a thrilling horror, it's not daft enough to venture into the cult B-movie arena and, although it carries a strong social message, it is not delivered particularly well - opting for a more sledgehammer style.

[Image: Ankit]

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Nails

"Nails" (2017, Dennis Bartok, Dark Sky Films)

Dana (Shauna Macdonald) finds herself  paralysed in a run-down, Irish hospital after a gruesome hit and run. Unable to speak, she desperately tries to communicate to staff and her family that she is being haunted by a malevolent spirit, bent on killing her.

Pretty standard horror fare, that doesn't efficiently make use of the more psychological scares at its disposal. The film opens well and enjoys some fun supernatural scenes and a strong, but innocent lead from Macdonald, however, it suffers from a slow pace, lots of plot holes and an overly familiar, over saturated plot. Ross Noble plays an orderly called Trevor, who's role seems to be a bit more involved than most.

Formulaic and a little dull, it doesn't stand out as anything exciting and, like a lot of films, suffers from a busy, messy end.

[Image: Dark Sky Films]

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A Christmas Horror Story

"A Christmas Horror Story" (2015, Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, Brett Sullivan, Copperheart Entertainment, Image Entertainment, RLJ Entertainment) is a Christmas anthology horror from Canada.

We follow four plot lines, which are interwoven throughout the run-time by the overarching plot following radio DJ, Dangerous Dan (William Shatner), who is pulling an all-nighter on Christmas eve.

One story follows a group of teens who have broken into a school to make a documentary about two murders which had previously happened there, only to find that there were more than memories left behind.

Another story follows one of the teens from the first story who is unable to go on the adventure because she is taken on a family outing to visit her rich, elderly aunt and accidentally becomes acquainted with Krampus.

A third story follows a young family who venture into private land to illegally chop down a Christmas tree and lose their child. When they find the little boy and take him home, he begins to act strangely and the parents become suspicious that he is not, in fact, their little boy afterall!

The fourth tale follows Santa himself, a burly man (George Buza) who finds that one of his elves has contracted a zombie virus and begins to infect his other helpers.... Going on a rampage through his own workshop, Santa eventually has to face a harsh reality...

An entertaining festive romp that covers all the bases (gore, violence, festive themes) without trying to be too clever. While it doesn't cover any specifically new ground, "A Christmas Horror Story" enjoys some nice plot twists and a good, fast pace that is engaging and intriguing.

[Image: Copperheart Entertainment]

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Death Spa

"Death Spa" aka "Witch Bitch"  (1989, Michael Fischa) is a campy 80s film about a haunted gym.

It's the late 80s and everyone is into lycra and leg warmers. We open onto the parking lot of the Starbody Health Spa. It's a stormy night, and the neon sign suddenly falters, losing the letters s,t,a,r,b,o,y,h and l. Cunningly leaving our movie title lit up in the rain. And that, my friends, is where all the cunning behind this picture ends.

"Death Spa" is a ridiculous romp through a haunted health club, chalk full of sweaty beautiful people in colourful workout outfits, gratuitous nude scenes, extremely 80s dance workouts and terrible dialogue. Oh, and it's set at Halloween. It's great and also a bit crap at the same time!

Michael Evans (William Bumiller) owns and operates the Starbody Health Spa. A recent widower after his wife committed suicide, Michael is back on the dating game. When some of his clients, including his new squeeze, are suddenly (and often fatally) attacked by his gym equipment, Michael begins to suspect that his late wife is haunting his gym!

Although slow in places and suffering from serious pacing issues, the film benefits from some fun, low budget effects and hilarious gore. It really is a great candidate for a so-bad-so-good cheesy movie night and definitely one for the low budget horror aficionados out there looking for something a little different to your usual haunted house flick! Just don't go in with any high expectations.

Hani