Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I continued my quest of 31 horror films over the month of October. Not as easy as you think. I am 2 days behind

Ju-on (V-cinema) - Takashi Shimizu's original v-cinema sensation, this sort of breaks my rules as I had seen this, just not with subtitles. You can read a review I wrote for it here. I have a theory that some films are scarier when you are absorbed by the visuals and not so much the narrative. This happened with this film, which I found haunting the first time I watched it sans subtitles, although not so much this time. The same thing happened the second time I saw Ringu. The first time was in the middle of the, and the film had subtitles, and while it was still frickin' amazing and oozed dread, it was far more a frightening experience the second time I watched it, late one night on TV in Korea, with no subtitles to save me. Maybe its the fact that glancing down to subtitles breaks the ever building sense of despair these films exude. I don't know. All I know is, it was scarier when I wasn't wrapped up in the narrative.

Ju-on: Shiroi Roujo - This year marked the 10th anniversary of the release of the original v-cinema Ju-on (see above) and so Takashi Shimizu 'oversaw' the production of two sequels, Ju-on: Shiroi Roujo aka Ju-on: White Ghost and Kuroi Shoujo aka Black Ghost. White Ghost definitely had its moments. I won't go into too much detail as I will be reviewing it shortly at the J-Film Pow-Wow, but needless to say, what it lacked in SFX and scary ghosts, it made up for with tension and a few creepy moments.

A Nightmare on Elm Street - This is another terrible remake by Platinum Dunes, and by the most pretentious music video director on earth, Samuel Bayer. I have issues with this man and his anal retentive Kodak film ads. Moving on, the film lacked any kind of tension, or character development. Its just a series of quick scares that have no build at all, and that are always combined with a loud boom of bass and loud noise, to let you know what just happened was suppose to be frightening. This is a piece of shit, the Paul Haggis version of a horror film.

30 Days of Night: Dark Days - I loved 30 Days of Night, and I love Ben Templesmith's art. This film obviously lacks the budget the first one has, and because of that it suffers. Its not a bad film, its actually fairly well executed. The problem is that the vampires, who are suppose to be feral and animalistic, don't look nearly as good as they should, like in the original. It also comes off sort of daft, because there are only a handful of vampires in the film. They send 30 or so to butcher Barrow in the first film, but here the queen Lilith only has 6 of them on her giant freighter? A bit silly.

Frozen - Adam Green is really becoming a force to be reckoned with. I loved this film. Very tense, and it had moments that made me cringe. Its also refreshing to see a film like this, that is simple in concept, and based around some great performances by the actors. And some of the camera work is pretty amazing. Adam Green's got some balls to make a film like this.