Category: Movies

Horror is one of the trickiest genres to get right.  If the movies are done wrong they are boring or cheesy.  At their worst they are just an excuses to torture naked people, but if they are done well they can be unforgettable.  To help all the filmmakers out there I thought I would share my top five horror movies.

5: Near Dark

If you are in to vampires that sparkle, this movie isn’t for you.  It as about a group of vampires that hunt in the south in stolen cars with blacked out windows.  This movie plays with light perfectly.  It always feels like the sun could be out at any moment to either destroy or save.  Near Dark is shocking and engrossing, and it is no wonder that the director Kathryn Bigelow would go on to win an Oscar.  Oh yeah it has 80s Bill Paxton in it!

4: Let The Right One In

I swear this whole list will not be vampire movies, but Let The Right One In is brilliant.  This movie isn’t exactly scary, but it keeps you in a constant state of unease.  There is something so wonderfully off about this film.  It is haunting to have a story about a vampire that will always be a child, and she just needs someone to play with (and get blood for her).

3: The Devil’s Backbone

Guillermo del Toro treats his horror movies like fairy tales, so they are always so darn whimsical.  That doesn’t mean they don’t deliver on the chills.  It just means they will manage to charm you at the same time.  He also loves to play with the idea that the monsters aren’t always bad.  That is definitely the case in the Devil’s Backbone.  This movie about a Spanish orphanage is scary, but it warns you that the true evil might be someone you don’t expect.

2: The Evil Dead

Sam Raimi’s classic The Evil Dead is not the zany comedies of The Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.  It is a dark, bloody, and disturbing film that pretty much defined the cabin in the woods genre.  Honestly it is only cabin in the woods film you need to see.  It also gave the world Bruce Campbell.  You’re welcome world!

1: The Descent

Full disclosure here: I am afraid of the dark and tight places.  The Descent a movie about spelunking gone wrong features both of those things in great abundance.  For first half of this film I can barely breathe.  It is almost a relief when the mutated monsters show up.  Watch the British version, not the wimpy US one.  The ending is just about perfect.

That is my list!  What movie would you add or take away?

It is time for me to finish reviewing the original Mad Max trilogy with Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome.  This was my favorite of the three movies growing up, but now after watching them all again in their not edited for cable glory, I now see that it is the weakest entry in the series.  Thus far anyway.  It isn’t terrible, but it just lacks the focus of the other films.

The film takes place fifteen years after Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and things have almost completely collapsed, but some people are starting to rebuild.  One such place is Barter Town.  A little encampment with electricity, commerce, and some semblance of law and order.  Oh yeah if you have an argument with someone you have to fight to the death in the titular Thunderdome!  So play nice.  This is where Max finds himself after being robbed by a flying bandit.  Later he helps the Lost Boys escape Neverland.

If you are looking at the description above and find the Neverland bit a little jarring, don’t worry it is in the film too.  It is no wonder that I thought that this was two movies growing up.  I used to think there was Thunderdome, and then Beyond Thunderdome.  Not so.  It is just one movie split in two, and the Lost Boys part is not very interesting.  The film takes Max away from the crazy people that the series is known for, and then makes him some sort of messiah for children.  Worse yet it only has one chase scene, and that is at the end of the movie for like ten minutes.  It is still a good chase, but just nothing on the level of The Road Warrior.

They got much better actors this time around, but since the story is worse it didn’t matter much.  They growl and shriek with the best of them, but if they have nothing to work with, there isn’t much they can do.  Even Mel Gibson looks a little lost in this film.  You can see him thinking, “so I don’t drive cars and shoot people?”.  Nope.  Just yell at some kids Mel.

I was pretty hard on this movie, but overall it is still pretty watchable in an 80’s sort of way.  It is just an odd turn from what the other movies are.  This film seemed to follow the Evil Dead sort of trajectory: hard core indie film, better version of the first film, and then new story with crazy self parody.  In Beyond Thunderdome’s case the parody version wasn’t all that funny, and the crazy story wasn’t super interesting.  I still like Thunderdome, but that is probably my nostalgia kicking in.