Scary or Bust

Greetings!

If I were to review every movie I watched on a weekly (or should I say... daily) basis, I’m not sure I would have time to go to work, hang out with my friends, or eat.  Still, it can’t hurt to throw in a couple of short reviews on occasion.  So I picked a few movies I have watched recently to write quick reviews of, and I decided to make all of them movies that are available to stream on Netflix (because it is a popular service that many people have access to).  Also, all three of these movies are horror movies, although to varying degrees.  Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Kairo (aka... Pulse) (2001)

First up is the Japanese horror film called Kairo, or more popularly known as Pulse.  This is a fairly well known story not necessarily because of this particular film, but because it was remade for American audiences in 2006 (the remake was called Pulse and starred Kristen Bell).  The remake was a typically shallow affair and isn’t very good, but I’m glad it exists because it lead me to the superior original film.  Kairo is an above average horror film with plenty of eerie moments and a surprisingly philosophical undertone.

Kairo is based around mankind’s relationship to the internet.  Mainly, it focuses on a mysterious program or website that a group of college kids stumble upon.  This program seems to open some doorway to supernatural forces that somehow possess those who encounter it and make them disappear.  Actually, the plot of the movie is kind of vague and doesn’t offer very many details, which makes the entire ordeal kind of unsatisfying.  Luckily, there are TONS of creepy moments that got my heart beating and it satisfied me as a horror movie should.  While many people may find this movie slow and confusing, I was sucked in by the eerie atmosphere and thematic undertones about how the internet may leave us more isolated than we want to admit.  Not a great movie, but a decent one.

7.5/10

The Frankenstein Theory (2013)

Next is the very recently released American horror film titled The Frankenstein Theory.  This film is a fauxumentary, which is to say a more organized found footage movie (yup... one of those).  The plot sounds very silly on paper, but I’ll give it a shot.  Basically, a documentary film crew is following a scientist named Jonathan Venkenheim because he believes that the monster from Mary Shelly’s famous novel Frankenstein is real.  Jonathan believes this because the famous Frankenstein story is based off of the studies of one of his early ancestors.  He wants to prove to the world that this fiction story is, in fact, non-fiction.  As silly as this sounds, the story isn’t actually as ridiculous as it plays out and offers some suspenseful and interesting moments.  Unfortunately, the movie is pretty stale as a whole and the “less-is-more” approach to the found footage genre makes it quite boring.

Most of the interesting bits of The Frankenstein Theory happen in the final 20 minutes of the movie, and the first two thirds of the film are supposed to be developing characters and intrigue in the overall theory that Jonathan believes in.  All of the acting is comical and I wasn’t the least bit invested in a single one of the characters, so that made it seem even longer.  There simply wasn’t enough horror in this movie and the overall story isn’t elaborated on enough to make it fulfilling.  Still, the moments that do bring in the Frankenstein monster were surprisingly effective and I found myself genuinely hoping that the movie would bring everything full circle.  Too bad that wasn’t the case.

4.5/10

The Hole (2009)

Finally, is the recent horror film The Hole.  Directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers, The Howling), The Hole is an almost family friendly horror film about a family that moves to a small town from Brooklyn only to discover a mysterious and frightening hole in their basement.  Dane and Lucas are the two sons (Dane being a teenager, Lucas being younger) of Susan and a father who is no longer a part of the family.  The two sons are the ones who discover the hole in the basement, and eventually a neighbor girl around Dane’s age joins in the mystery.  Basically, the three kids are trying to figure out what is in the hole and what it exactly is while creepy things start happening to all three of them.

I say that this film is almost family friendly because it has a very gentle and innocent core.  There is literally no blood or gore in the film, and it is a PG-13 film that hardly rises above a PG rating because of a little bit of foul language.  The scares are pretty light and there is very little here that the seasoned movie fan has not seen in this type of movie before.  A lot of the dialogue and humor comes off as pretty cheeky and the family values are overly obvious.  Still, The Hole is a harmless, innocent horror movie with many thrills that younger audiences (perhaps between 10 - 13) will probably find entertaining.  While I found it predictable and kind of cheap in parts, I can’t deny that it wasn’t well made or entertaining.  If I was younger I would have loved this, but as a 23 year old who has seen a ton of movies I can’t recommend this highly to others of my age or older (unless you have kids).

6/10