Movie Review: Haunter

A few months ago a coworker suggested this might be a movie I enjoyed, so when I saw it at my local library, I decided to give it a shot.

So Haunter is one of those great little horror films that works best with audiences who don't really know what to expect from it; if you like scary films, it's definitely worth a watch and the less you know about the plot and premise the better.

On a scale of scary ranging from Goosebumps up to the genuinely creepy, get-under-your-skin films like Prince of Darkness, The Conjuring, or A Nightmare on Elm Street, Haunter sits quite nicely near the Goosebumps end, definitely scarier than those (although the stories featuring that creepy marionette still freak me out), but not so terrifying you're unlikely to sleep afterwards.

What it really is however, is a great little horror movie that I think both of my daughters would have loved as young teens - a performance by Abigail Breslin as the main character and a really intriguing concept kept the film surprisingly fresh for me.

Definitely worth a watch.

Bookmonkey Saw: Day 30 - The End

Conclusion

So here we are at the end of my month dedicated to an examination of the Saw franchise and what have I learned?

First of all, the 2004 film Saw is an effective, low-budget thriller that impressed me with concept, acting and a few intriguing plot twists.  I think I'll add my copy of the film to my horror DVD collection, and although I have zero interest in seeing the many films inspired by the franchise, I can honestly say the film is worth the watch for thriller fans.

Next, the comic book is a great example of how not to expand a text into another medium and both the Reality TV series and the video game are excellent examples of how to explore the phase space of an original text.  The comic added nothing to the original story and gave no lead-in to the sequel, in addition it could have created the beginning of an entire comic book series (for those of you unaware, horror and comics have a long and involved history together - check out The Horror The Horror: Comic Books the Government didn't want you to read by Jim Trombetta), while the reality TV series and Video game both spawned sequels and introduced new audiences to the horror genre and the original film franchise.

Finally, as a series, the franchise quickly looses steam and soon exhausts it's original concept - by the end of the third film I had seen the basic plot of the remaining four films.  As a long time fan of the horror genre, I can honestly say that unlike fantasy, horror works best in short form.  What horror also does is pack kids in theatres, and like the Friday the 13th's and Nightmare on Elm Street's of the 1980s, the Hammer Horror Films of the 1960s and the Universal Monster Movies of the 1930s and 40's, it ensures a new generation of teens grow up with a series they can call their own, as evidenced by the massive amount of fan fiction and websites devoted to any and all horror series.

In horror films, the two biggest sub-genres are slasher movies (wherein a killer chases teens around until one of the teen girls starts doing the chasing) and ghost movies (wherein a ghostly phenomenon terrifies a family until the Dad embraces the spiritual).  In 2004 Saw found another way (no teen characters and a "Slasher" who wants his victims to live, and to be better people for it) and creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan followed it up in 2010 with Insidious, one of the most effective ghost films I've ever seen, which also turned the tried-and-true formula on it's ear (It's not the house that's haunted).

Book Review: Earthbound by Richard Matheson

My continuing journey through the works of Richard Matheson led me to the 1982 novel Earthbound this week (which he wrote under the pseudonym Logan Swanson), and it was pretty darn cool.

Having recently read his What Dreams May Come, which could basically be described as a romance set in the afterlife, this book is a lot darker, a little spookier and definitely more adult in nature.

The novel follows a married couple, David and Ellen Cooper, who have travelled back to the site of their honeymoon to try and rekindle the romance of their marriage as well as get over an affair David has recently had.

Unfortunately, the little cottage they stay in has another resident, a beautiful and mysterious woman named Marianna, who takes an immediate and intense interest in David.

The novel was a lot of fun, I enjoyed the fact that both the leads were in their forties (they are soon-to-be-grandparents) and found the atmosphere pretty interesting. The novel is described an erotic ghost story, so be warned, some of the book gets pretty graphic.

Overall a lot of fun, and leaves me looking forward to his next novel, a western called Journal of the Gun Years.