The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death

Runtime: 98 minutes
Release Date: January 2, 2015
Rating: PG-13
Director: Tom Harper


Eve Parker is a school teacher working in London during World War II. After a series of bombings, the headmistress decides to take the children of parents who couldn't leave to Crythin Gifford, the same town from the first film. Along the way, Eve meets a handsome pilot named Harry and later encounters an odd man who seems most displeased at her bringing kids to the town.


The two women take the children from the house from the first movie, so you know this won't end well. Not long after arriving, Eve has a dream that reveals she once had a baby and gave it up. When she wakes, she has an encounter with the mysterious lady in black, who makes comment revealing that she knows about Eve's history.


Though Eve initially doesn't believe in ghosts, she's forced to change her mind after a series of experiences in the old house. One young boy, Edward, shares a closeness with Eve and seems to look at her as his surrogate mother. As his parents died and he no longer speaks, she struggles to maintain that closeness and to protect him, which is hard given that the other kids bully him.


After several of the children die at what appears to be their own hands, Eve locates an old record that tells the story of what happened to the female ghost and why the woman in black haunts the old house. She also discovers that Harry has his own secrets and his own reasons for not wanting to get stuck in the house. As it becomes clear that the woman in black is targeting Edward, Even must fight back to save the child, herself, and her new love.


Oh dear god. I cannot explain how much I disliked The Woman in Black 2. The best word I can find to describe it is long. Despite running less than 100 minutes, it's the type of movie that feels like it takes hours to finish. I literally kept checking the time because I kept thinking that it had to be over, and it seemed like the movie just kept getting longer.


One of the only things it had going for it was its atmosphere. That house is so damn creepy that I think you could set any ghost story there and still have a great background. There were also a few too many jump scenes that tried too hard to scare viewers. Since most of those scenes ended on such a down note, none of the later jump scenes really paid off. As someone who loves older buildings, I got a kick out of the settings, but that was about all I will remember of this one.

It Follows Movie Review – Don't Have Sex With Random Strangers

Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: March 27, 2015
Rating: R
Director: David Robert Mitchell


Just in case we needed another reason not to have sex with people we just met, here comes It Follows.


A young woman runs out of her house clad only in panties, a tank, and heels. After a neighbor asks if she's okay, her father comes and yells for her. Running back to her house, she runs off and eventually finds her way to the beach, where she spends the night shaking in fear. The following morning, we find her dead on the beach.


It Follows then introduces us to Jay, a pretty blond teenager with a crush on a boy named Hugh. While playing a game in the movie theater, Hugh points out a woman in the back. When Jay doesn't see her, he freaks out and pulls her out of the theater. On their second date, they have sex before he chloroforms her and takes her to an abandoned building. Once there, he tells her that she now has "it" and that "it" will follow her. He shows her a naked woman stalking them and explains that it can take on many different forms and once it kills her, it will come for him. Hugh also warns her to have sex quickly to pass it on to someone else.


After Hugh leaves her partially naked on the road in front of her house, her family rushes her to the hospital. Jay sinks into a deep depression and keeps noticing the weird people that seem to follow her. Though she tries to explain what happened to her sister and friends, no one really seems to believe her until the attacks begin happening. They track down Hugh's former apartment and discover that he rented it under a fake name before actually finding him, but he offers little in the way of help. Jay and her friends finally go away together while she copes with deciding what to do next while it keeps following her.


I have mixed feelings about It Follows. On the one hand, I liked it when I first saw it, though I do wonder if I would have liked it less had I not seen it immediately after Unfriended. On the other hand, there wasn't much memorable about it, and I have to admit that I have a hard time remembering a lot about the movie, even though I just saw it last night.


So many people compare it to classic Hollywood horror films like Halloween, but I actually found the homages a little distracting. It literally seems like the director couldn't decide which decade he wanted the movie set in. Everyone, except for a few people, seem to drive really old cars, no one ever has or uses a cell phone, and the interior of homes seem really outdated, which makes it seem like a 70s or 80s movie. But, one of the characters uses a tablet shaped like a clam shell, which tends to bring it into the modern era. It probably wouldn't bug too many people, but it bothered me for some reason.


It Follows did have some good moments though. Some of the forms that it takes were particularly disturbing. I'm not too crazy about seeing a giant, a deformed kid, or a woman with one breast hanging out turning up in my house. The director also created a great atmosphere with those forms showing up just behind Jay or off to the side of the camera. Unfortunately, I think he took it just a little too far. It literally got to the point where it seemed like there was a "fake it" behind Jay in every scene.


Like I said, I'm a little on the fence about this one. It was a lot better than Unfriended, but I'm not sure if I really liked it as much as I would have, had I watched it on its own.

Animal Movie Review – Seriously, Never Ever Go Into the Woods

Runtime: 86 minutes
Release Date: February 17, 2015
Rating: NR
Director: Brett Simmons


Alissa, her stepbrother, their significant others, and their mutual friend drive to the middle of nowhere for a daytime hike. Jeff, the stepbrother, is something of a man's man. Not only does he come fully prepared, but he keeps pushing them to go a little further. He and Alissa once took the same trail often with his father when they were younger.


Jeff's girlfriend Mandy wants to turn around and go back, and Alissa agrees. Though she rightly points out that it's getting dark and that they don't want to be out in the middle of nowhere at night, he keeps arguing, which leads to the two fighting. Alissa then accidentally stumbles upon what's left of a dead body.


As a large monster/animal hybrid jumps out of the woods, everyone runs for cover. They eventually find themselves running into an isolated cabin in the woods. A random man uncovers the door, lets them inside, and barricades the door behind them. The man, Carl, and his wife Vicky were on a business trip when their car broke down. After wandering through the woods, they found their way to the house. Upstairs, is a man named Douglas who briefly popped up at the beginning of the film after his own run in with the same animal.


The ragtag group of survivors lock themselves inside the old house in the hopes of making it through the night. One manages to get cell phone service long enough to call for help. Rangers promise to track their cell to the nearest tower and send help, and both Alissa and Jeff's parents promise to send their own friends in the area out to look for them. As the night grows on and the animal gets closer, it becomes clear that they might not make it until the morning.


Animal is another movie I randomly stumbled across on Netflix and one that I watched without expecting much. It starts out as one of those classic horror flicks with all the typical stereotypes. There is naturally a girl who has to stop and put on her makeup before going into the woods, the gay friend who is so effeminate that it made my gay friend keep cringing and bringing it up, and the guy is so butch and masculine that he makes everyone else look bad. As the movie unfolds though, we find out there is more to the eye. The girl with all the makeup is just worried about losing her boyfriend, and Mr. Butchy McButch might not be as butch as he looks.


You also have to love any movie that features Joey Lauren Adams. Here, she plays Vicky and does an adequate job, but her role is a little one dimensional. She pretty much just serves as the wife of a guy tasked with leading a group of survivors. While she does eventually get her own story line, the movie is almost over by that point.


The director did do a pretty damn good job of showing the animal, and I want to give it up for the special effects team. With its gruesome teeth, the saliva dripping off its fangs, and the way it just shot out of the woods when I least expected it, I couldn't wait to see a little more. Animal is currently on Netflix, if you want to give it a go.

Unfriended Movie Review – Reminds Me Why I Dislike Most Teens

Runtime: 82 minutes
Release Date: April 17, 2015
Rating: R
Director: Levan Gabriadze


Unfriended opens with a short, very short, description of what happened to a teenage girl named Laura. After getting drunk at a party, someone filmed the aftermath and posted it online, which led to her getting brutally teased and taunted by others online. Unable to cope with their bars, she shot herself in the head, which was also filmed and posted online.


Blaire was one of Laura's closest friends and is chatting with her boyfriend Mitch online on the one year anniversary of her friends suicide. Their talk turns dirty just as their friends start calling. Adam, Ken, and Jess interrupt their Skype call without their permission and notice an unknown person in their call. Despite hanging up and calling each other separately, the person, who has no avatar or photograph, remains on the line.


Assuming it's their friend Val, they call her and put her in the conversation too. Blaire keeps trying to talk with Mitch who doesn't respond. When he finally does, he tells her that someone hacked Laura's account, which leads to her getting a message from her dead friend too. Though she attempts to unfriend the account, the button goes dark and prevents her. She eventually memorializes the account to put an end to the messages.


After typical teenage chitchat, the unknown person in their conversation finally rears its head. Hacking into Jess's Facebook account, the person posts a number of pictures of a drunk Val, which leads to random people telling her to kill herself and taunting her in the same way people once did Laura. Blaming Jess, Val logs out of their conversation. As the night goes on, the person finally reveals her identity and makes it clear that she's out for revenge. Each of the teenagers must slowly reveal some of their own secrets that they hoped would remain hidden.


We sat down and watched an episode of Modern Family a few weeks ago that took place entirely on computer and phone screens. Though it was an interesting premise, it grew tired about halfway through. Take the same idea, multiply it by 2.5, and you'll have Unfriended.


When I found out our local drive in planned to show two horror movies back to back, I knew where I would be that Friday night. Sadly for me, this was the first movie they showed. Despite a supposed run time of 82 minutes, the movie was actually just over an hour long, somewhere around 70 minutes or so. The person next to us screamed that he wanted his money back, and we came across multiple other people who absolutely hated it.


I think the problem was with the way the film plays and not the plot itself. Imagine sitting in a room trapped with five teenagers chatting online. That should give you some idea of this movie. It's literally a group of teens on Skype, sending instant messages, playing music, and talking on their cell phones. I can see why it might appeal to teens, but I think I'm outside its target demographic.


The sad thing is that Unfriended actually had some good scenes. I've never seen someone suffocated to death with a curling iron down the throat, and there was a scene where a camera randomly shows up just behind one of the characters. Those scenes left me wishing the movie had more of those moments. I'm still not even sure if the second movie was that good or if it just looked good in comparison.

The Intruders Movie Review – Another Reason Not to Buy a House Without Looking at its History

Runtime: 93 minutes
Release Date: February 24, 2015
Rating: PG-13

Director: Adam Massey

Rose had a partial breakdown while studying at Standford. Her father, Jerry, worries that she suffers from the same emotional and mental problems that led to her mother's death not that long ago. As the university asked her to take some time off, Jerry decides to move them into a new home far removed from their old home to give his daughter a new start.

Not long after moving in, Rose meets her next door neighbor Leila. Leila expresses disgust at her for living in that home after what happened, but before she can explain further, her father pulls her back inside. Rose also meets Noah, a handyman helping a team of contractors fix up the house and a guy who conveniently seems to be around every time something bad happens.

Rose quickly learns that a young woman named Rachel went missing from that house the year before and that Leila's dad was originally the prime suspect. The woman who owned the house, Cheri, acted a little suspicious before disappearing herself. Most people in town thought she was a pillar of the community for the work she did with her church. After discovering the story, Rachel finds that there is something just plain wrong with her house.

She finds the head of a doll in one of her desk drawers and later sees the same head popping up in other places in the house. After venturing into the basement, she finds a tiny closet with a lock on the outside and the words "Rachel Was Here" carved on the rock wall inside. Rose then hears weird noises and starts running, only to trip and fall down the stairs and see the shadowy figure of a man standing over her. Her dad begins questioning if she actually saw anything or if everything she fears is only in her head, especially after learning that someone stole the majority of his prescription pain pills...

I never heard of The Intruders until I saw the trailer for it on another movie. As a fan of Donal Logue, I added it to my mental list. He turns up as Rose's father, but he doesn't play a very likeable character, and he occasionally seems a little bored. Miranda Cosgrove does a much better job as Rose.

Both the director and Cosgrove did a good job of leaving us wondering if everything that happened in the film occurred only in her mind or in real life. When she led her dad to the basement and showed him the writing on the wall, it suddenly looked faded and barely legible, which only added to the idea that maybe she made up everything. Though the film does make it clear what happened in the end, it also ends on one of those notes that makes you wonder if maybe Rose really is more like her mother than she thinks.

I also want to give a shout out to Tom Sizemore. Given the problems he had in the past, it was nice to see him back to doing a fairly good job. As the father of the next door neighbor, he does a pretty good job of walking the line between creepy and possible killer/kidnapper and a guy just looking out for his daughter.

The Intruders got some horrible reviews, but I have to say that I actually liked it. While the reveal was a little hokey and something we've all seen dozens of times, I would probably watch it again, which is something I almost never say.