Monday, October 9, 2017

#8 - House of the Witch (2017), #9 - The Wailing (2017)

I watched a couple horror movies yesterday, but I didn't finish watching the second one til late, so I didn't get a chance to write up the reviews.  Let's catch up today with a double feature!  :-D

House of the Wtich (2017) is about a group of bored teens who decide to break into an old mansion on Halloween, and steal some items from inside the place.  Turns out the house is rumored to be the home of a witch, and when bad things start to happen, the teens begin to think that the rumors might actually be true.

I caught House of the Witch for the first time on Syfy channel, and that tells you a lot about the quality of this movie.  Acting is sub-par, there are no veteran actors to be found, the CGI is cheap and the location is mostly shot inside a boarded-up house.  About the only things this movie has going for it is the general attractiveness of the teenage cast, and the somewhat-coherent plot, which (minor spoiler, mostly given away by the title) involves the ghost of a witch.  I did kind of like the ending, which I won't spoil for you, if you want to catch this on Syfy at some point before the end of the month.  Would I watch it again?  No, probably not, although the witch was kind of attractive (eventually).

Syfy is promoting their usual "31 Days of Horror" for Halloween in October, which, if they hadn't been using that phrase for their own channel, I'd have used for my October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon.  To be fair, I probably came up with my idea to review 31 horror movies in october before Syfy came up with their 31 days of horror idea (OHMRAT is what, 8 years old now?), but let's not quibble.  They show bad horror movies, and I review them, so it's not like we're competing for viewers.  This year, Syfy is actually showing a few new horror movies, mostly on the weekends.  Sure, the movies aren't great, but hey, maybe you're bored and looking for something you haven't seen before, and maybe a light-horror Syfy movie of the week is right up your dark alley!  That... sounds wrong, somehow... but my point is, I wanted to make you guys aware that Syfy was showing new horror flicks this month.  Mission accomplished.  Moving on.

The Wailing (2016) is a Korean horror flick, which starts out rather horribly, and not in a bad way.  Seems there is a gruesome murder, and a police sargeant is called to the scene.  Apparently, a ginseng farmer butchered his wife, and possibly his entire family.  While investigating this crime, the Sargeant begins to realize the murderer is actually suffering from some sort of horrible disease, which causes his skin to erupt in a blistering rash.  Soon the rash begins to spread, triggering other horrific murders, and the Sargeant's own daughter is infected.  Can he find a cure for this mysterious disease before it takes his own daughter?

The Wailing is kind of a long movie, well over 2 hours, which makes it seem like it's a slow-starter.  There's a lot of promise that's shown in the first part, how mysterious the illness is, and the murders.  The acting is decent (hard to tell since it's a foreign-language film, but it seemed okay), and the effects are decent.  I don't think the second half of the movie lives up to the promise of the first half, but there's certainly a lot going on in this film, so you won't get bored.  I caught this one on Netflix if you want to watch it yourself.  I might watch it again, because it seems like one of those movies where I should have caught on to what was going on, and I just didn't get it until the end.  This movie was a bit confusing.  Either way, it wasn't a bad watch, certainly not the first time through.

In other news, yesterday was the last day of Oktoberfest, so I said to myself "Hey, let's pop online and see how drunk those wacky Germans are on the last day of Oktoberfest!"  and I answered myself "That's a great idea!" because I am alone most of the time, and have no one else to talk to, but myself.  So, I cue up some Oktoberfest Webcams, and see nothing but wet, dark alleys and mostly-dark buildings.  On one of the live webcams, I saw a couple guys come out of a building, toss something onto a pile of building materials, and then the camera cut to another view.  Then I remembered that there was a big time difference between here and there, and realized Oktoberfest was already over!  "Missed it by THAT MUCH!" I said to myself, in the voice of Maxwell Smart.  "That was the worst Maxwell Smart impression I've ever heard." I observed.  Indeed.

Whew, all caught up, and two brand-spanking-new movies got reviewed for a change!  Wheeeeee!  Now I get to "Netflix and chill" with myself for the rest of the day!  If that's even possible.  Happy Columbus Day?  Sure, why not!  See you guys tomorrow!  :-D

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