Category Archives: Horror

Movie Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

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The newest installment in the 28 Days Later, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DeCosta, opened this weekend, and my sweetie-wife and I attended a Sunday matinee.

Bone Temple picks up just a very short time after the ending of the previous franchise entry with that film’s protagonist, 12-year-old Spike, a captive of the ‘Jimmies,’ a tiny, deranged band of sadistic marauders led by Jimmy, a man who survived the outbreak since childhood and now believes himself to be the embodiment of Satan’s will on Earth.

Sony Pictures

In a parallel plotline the movie follows Dr. Ian Kelson, also a character carried over from the previous movie, as he continues his isolated life amid the grand ossuary of towering bone that he constructed to honor the dead. Kelson’s experiments with the infected lead him to a sort of friendship with a massive, infected man. When a member of the Jimmies spies Kelson, dancing with an infected, they mistake him for Satan himself setting the two forces into conflict for the film’s final act.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a fine and perfectly serviceable follow-up to 28 Years Later. It is competently directed by Nia DeCosta and with a script by Alex Garland, the originator of the franchise, that has no serious plot holes, consistent believable characters, along with moments of action, horrific violence, and humor. And yet, for all that the best praise I can give this production is that it is ‘fine.’ Garland, who so often explores large ideas and questions with his writing, think 2024’s Civil War,Ex Machina, or the mind twisting Men, does very little of that with this movie. The deepest theme I can pull out of The Bone Temple is that some people are good and try to be of service to others, some are bad and seek pleasure in the pain that they can inflict on others, and many, if not most, are simply trying to survive a cruel and indifferent world. This is hardly the sort of statement one would expect from the scriptwriter of Annihilation.

As a horror film, whatever that phrase might mean to you, The Bone Temple, for me, does not deliver. I enjoyed the film, but more as a drama and character study than a genre film. Mind you, a genre film can be a great drama and character study while delivering the terror, unease, and apprehension that makes for a great horror film. Midsommar is a terrific example of the film that does that, as does The Haunting (the original not the action movie remake.) The real horror that is presented in The Bone Temple is the horror that people do to each other, that people are the real monsters, but that has been a subtext of the zombie movie since its inception with Night of the Living Dead and this movie breaks no real ground in that regard.

The performances in the film are competent. Alfie Williams (Spike) is given far less to do this time around than in the last movie where his character and his choices drove the narrative. Jack O’Connell (Jimmy) delivers a perfectly by the book portrayal of the sadistic psychopath, but Garland’s script aside from a minor trait of actually believing he is the son of Satan gives Jimmy nothing that steps outside of the well-trod path of the cinematic psychopath. It is in Ralph Fiennes’ (Kelson) portrayal of the kind doctor lost in a mad world that gives the film its depth. It is from Kelson that we see humanity and humor and a truly unforgettable musical video performance.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is worth seeing, particularly if you are a fan of Ralph Fiennes, but I doubt that the film will linger long in your memory.

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A Thematic Problem with The Red Shirt Issue

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Yesterday evening, I came across a post from a friend online that expressed their middling reaction to del Toro’s Frankenstein prompting a return of my own thoughts that del Toro had worked so hard to make his monster sympathetic that no one of consequence died at its hands, a major deviation from the source text.

del Toro’s use of nameless crew to be killed in a thrilling and exciting opening combat scene with an unstoppable monster makes for a great opening to his luscious film but becomes hollow when the rest of the time the monster is presented melodramatically sympathetic and without emotional or ethical flaws. One could be forgiven for forgetting that the movie opened with mass murder. After all, they were literally nobodies.

Now, I have written about this before calling it his ‘Red Shirt’ problem. For those who are unaware, ‘red shirts’ refers to the often unnamed and wholly uncharacterized extras presented as security officers in Star Trek. These day players came onto the scene and in popular (but exaggerated) opinion died in droves.  The essence is still on target, they were essentially nameless characters brought on to dramatize the danger of that episode, a necessary evil of the time as no network program could go about killing its major and central characters. (This was decades before Game of Thrones would make it a drinking game.)

Western literature and oral tradition stretching back into prehistory is corrupted with a nasty little idea, that some people are simply born better than the rest of us. The nobility deserves their castles, their rich food, and the product of our labor, our bodies, and our lives because of the blue blood that courses through their veins. The ‘Chosen One’ narrative so popular in everything from religion to Star Wars is a product of this form of thinking. Luke and Aragon are good people because they were born to it, not from choice, not from making a decision to be good, but by their very blood. The force and the right to rule flows from their heritage and not their choices. We, the non-chosen, need to step aside and let out betters make the choices that will rule our lives. Our duty is to serve and to be thankful.

And here is the poisonous subtext in the ‘red shirt’ problem, it perpetuates this division of people into those worth and deserving of sympathy, consideration, and ultimately power from those lower, nameless people of the great ‘unwashed masses’ whose existence only matters in the moment that it impacts the monied and good-blooded people worthy of names. There are your ‘betters’ to whom you must defer with titles such as my lord, sir, mister — and to whom you must pay your obedience or suffer the lash and then there is everyone else, ‘red shirts’ to be used and discarded either on the battlefield or the factory to advance the lives and lifestyles of their ‘betters.’ The subtext of nameless victims in horror and action movies is that some lives are inherently more valuable than others.

“Red shirts” are not only a lazy and cheap play for a short cut to dramatic stakes, the practice subtly subverts the egalitarian ideals that all lives are valuable regardless of the accident of their birth or their importance to any particular narrative by regulating some characters to nameless and forgettable disposal.

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Frankenstein’s ‘Red Shirt’ Problem

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Guillermo del Toro’s production of Frankenstein is glorious to behold, visually and thematically rich, stuffed with great actors giving generally great performances, it is everything you should expect from del Toro when he’s off the leash, given a budget that fits his vision.

Netflix

It also has a shortcoming in the adaptation department. Now, I have written several times that I harbor no sympathy for the creature in the original text. From its own lips it strikes me as a vain and murderous narcissist who easily self-justifies its acts of wanton violence. Going into this film I knew that the novel’s creature was not going to make an appearance. Del Toro’s long-time sympathy for all monsters made such an interpretation simply beyond the pale. But the more I consider the film the more I am struck by just how much he had to forcibly change to have the sympathetic character that he wanted to present.

In the original text the creation kills, directly or indirectly, several characters: Elizabeth, after her wedding to Victor; Henry Clerval, Victor’s close friend; William, Victor’s brother, a mere child in the text. The thing framed the nanny Justine for William’s murder, and she is lynched for the monster’s crime.

In del Toro’s Frankenstein, the creation kills no one who has a name. William’s death comes as collateral damage in combat with Victor, and even then, in this version, he’s an adult and complicit in the creation, his innocence greatly reduced. Elizabeth dies at Victor’s hand because there can be no subtlety in the theme that he is the real monster.

In its attack on the ice-locked ship, we hear that after the first encounter it killed ‘six men,’ and it may have killed more later, but these men are given no names, they are not characters to be mourned. When the captain tells his crew that the creature is free to leave, there is no word of protest that the murderer of their shipmates is escaping any and all justice. It is as if those men simply never existed because in terms of this film they never did. They were ‘red shirts’ there to die in service of showing that there was danger and to make for an exciting scene.

Taken on its own, this production is fantastic but it is best viewed with total amnesia to the source material.

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Streaming Review: Eye of the Devil

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I was listening to one of my many horror movie podcasts the other day when during a discussion of folk horror films one of the hosts mentioned such a film starring David Niven.

David Niven? Horror movie?

That’s a pairing of words I had not expected at all. This was one folk horror I had to see. Unfortunately for me in their discussion the podcast did give away the turn in the movie so it was less impactful than it might have been.

MGM

Adapted from the novel Day of the Arrow, Eye of the Devil stars David Niven as Philippe de Montfaucon the Marquis de Bellenac at an old and isolated French estate where the people hold strange rituals and customs. Philippe is called back to the estate as the grape harvest has failed for the third year in a row and he implores his wife, Catherine (Deborah Kerr) to stay behind in the city. Catherine, of course, does not stay behind but follows her husband, bringing along their two children, to the estate. Almost immediately upon arrival Catherine is terrorized by a pair of apparently psychotic siblings, Odile (Sharon Tate, here credited as ‘Introducing Sharon Tate) and Christian (David Hemmings). With her husband’s behavior growing odd and the country folk of the estate apparently intent on frightening her away, Catherine engages in an investigation to discover the truth behind those strange customs and secrets of the ancient estate.

I did not dislike this movie, but it is very hard for me to judge the film since the secret that Catherine, our true protagonist, is seeking to discover is the very thing revealed by the podcast. This is a movie whose engine turns on a single question, What is Going On, and if the answer is known ahead of time, or guessed accurately too soon, then there is little to no narrative weight or momentum keeping the viewer’s attention.

Niven and Kerr are fine in the film, turning in decent performances, but Kerr’s Catherine begins to have repeated scenes making the film feel dull and expanding the sense of its running time which is a mere 96 minutes. Sharon Tate is quite good here as the mysterious and dangerous sister. With very little dialogue Tate conveys menace with a look and her bearing.

I find it hard to recommend Eye of the Devil but it’s also hard to disentangle how much of my non-enjoyment stemmed from the ‘spoiler’ versus how much the film’s pacing simply plodded.

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More Thoughts on Frankenstein

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Not so much about del Toro’s recent and lush production but more thoughts about the source text and the way people interpret it.

It is a common thought that the creature is a sad and pitiable character, his pain understandable, and perceives Victor Frankenstein as the true villain. The vain and self-centered scientist abandons his creation the moment he lays eyes on its unconventional appearance, leaving the poor creation in a monstrous body to suffer the indignities of a cruel and heartless society.

And as far as that analysis goes, it is correct, but it elides several aspects of the text and the horrific events that spring forth from it.

The creature, after finding shelter and hiding amongst a family, teaches itself to read and eventually becomes quite well-read and self-educated, skilled in understanding complex philosophical texts and arguments. This element is often deployed to portray the creature as sympathetic. To me, it is an element that renders him even more evil.

It is after the creature has obtained such mental heights as having read philosophy and advanced texts that it plans and executes the murder of a young child, framing an innocent girl as the murderer so that she is killed by a lynch mob. Neither the child William Frankenstein nor the young woman Justine mistreated the creature in any manner. Their lives were mere tools to be wielded in the creature’s quest for vengeance. They were not people with lives and emotions to be considered but things to be manipulated and abused for the creature’s self-important goals. These were not mad, spur-of-the-moment killings, but actions that were cold, calculating, and utterly indifferent to the pain they inflicted except that they troubled Victor.

Yes, Victor is horrible as well. Once freed from the grips of his obsession, he abandons all responsibility, but honestly, his sins are far less than the monster’s.

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Movie Review: Frankenstein (2025)

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There was no way I was missing my shot at seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on the big screen, even if it wasn’t showing at an AMC theater and therefore I couldn’t use my subscription benefit.

Netflix

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has been directly or indirectly adapted countless times and has been a staple of the silver screen for over a hundred years. (There is a silent version made by Edison, so it’s at the very start of movies.) I do not think any adaptation has retained every element of Shelley’s sprawling novel, with most productions picking and choosing the parts and themes that they most want to enhance and explore. Universal in their classic film played to the God vs. Man themes while Hammer focused on the evils of a scientist obsessed with his own pursuits.

With del Toro I went in with a fairly strong set of expectations based on the director’s body of work. This production would emphasize the creation’s humanity, shower it with sympathy, and tread on the ground questioning who is the tale’s real monster.

I was not wrong.

Frankenstein (2025) is a luscious feast for the eyes in its production. Nearly every new scene or sequence not only presents production design that dazzles and captivates and also brings in numerous beloved actors. The script, for the most part, dodges the deadly dull trap of overexplaining Victor Frankenstein’s obsession and its origins, but neither does it skate past them unmentioned.

Oscar Isaac turns in a wonderfully calculated performance which echoes without repeating the traits he employed for Ex Machina. (Another story clearly derived from Shelley’s original novel.) Jacob Elordi is sublime in his performance as the creation, certainly capturing the initial innocent, childlike nature that del Toro wanted and managing the transformation to enraged, implacable beast quite handsomely. If there is a weakness in the cast, and I realize the horror community will violently disagree with me on this point, it is Mia Goth as Elizabeth. I never believed that Elizabeth lived and breathed as a character but rather seemed to exist as a collection of traits and phrases meant to impel others along their courses. I have witnessed Goth’s performance in other projects and even when I detested the movies, I found her quite good in them. I suspect the challenges of both an accent and pseudo-period dialog sapped too much of her energy. There is a school of thought in film production that accents can get between an actor and their performance. On the other hand, I found Chistoph Waltz’s Harlander, Victor’s financier and research associate, thoroughly engrossing with more than a hint of The Bride of Frankenstein‘s Doctor Pretorious.

del Toro clearly is a fan of numerous previous productions of this tale and throughout the film makes sly references to them. I appreciate that the references are subtle enough that for the casual viewer they will pass by unnoticed. There is not ‘look at this’ in the cinematography letting you know that the decrepit mill set mirrors the windmill from Universal’s production nor when the creation is shot in the face is there a cue highlighting that this came from the Hammer films.

There are elements eliminated entirely from Shelley’s text. William is no longer a child of six or seven to be murdered by the creation as a revenge plot but is now an adult and is complicit in Victor’s crimes against nature. Elizabeth’s close, though not by blood, relation has been eliminated so any romance between her and Victor no longer carries the aroma of incest.

This is a lovely film, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It needs to be seen in a theater if you can swing it, but at the very least on Netflix next month. Should it come to an AMC in the next couple of weeks I may venture forth for a second in-theater viewing.

However, I wonder if anyone is ever going to do a production that depicts the creation as the monster it is in the text. A vain, narcissistic incel that believes its own pain and agony justifies murderous rage upon innocent victims.

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Movie Review: Terrified

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Please note that this review is for the Argentinian horror film Terrified and not 2016 American slasher Terrifier.

Aura Films

As part of their year-long film festival of Neo-noir and foreign horror movies, yesterday Film Geeks San Diego presented Terrified by Argentinian writer/director Demian Rugna. Expanded from a short film inspired by the director’s nightmare of something under the bed, Terrified follows a sequence of seemingly unconnected supernatural occurrences in a quiet neighborhood of an Argentinian city. Told from different points of view and from different points within the story’s timeline, though without chapter markers as in the recent Weapons, Terrified skillfully weaves the separate threads together with the use of a team of paranormal investigators, experienced and mature persons who turn out to be wholly unprepared for the nature and scope of the neighborhood’s troubles. The film ends with only vague answers to the hauntings and deaths, making the supernatural threats more intense by not giving the audience a pat reason and set of rules that would return balance to the universe.

I quite enjoyed Terrified, finding it a film that, while it presented truly horrifying images and sequences, at its heart it has a connection with humanity and community. The festival actually presented a double feature of Argentinian horror movies yesterday. The second feature was a zombie comedy. However, because it was shot on consumer-grade video with handheld cameras, it threatened to ignite a migraine, and I left shortly after it started.

Terrified is currently available on streaming and video on demand.

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Streaming Review The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll

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In preparation for this week’s episode of The Evolution of Horror podcast, last night I watched The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, released in the United States as House of Fright.

Hammer Studios

Yet another adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this Hammer Studios production is not very memorable. It has the same core elements of nearly every other adaptation: Dr. Henry Jekyll develops a ‘scientific’ method, in this case an injection, for separating out elements of the human mind often labeled good and evil. Experimenting on himself, he releases Hyde, and a battle ensues between the two personalities for control of the corporal body that they share, ending tragically for the good doctor.

The production reflects that distinctive Hammer look with vibrant colors that pop off the screen and a collection, particularly in the opening scene’s supporting characters, of idiosyncratic personalities.

Paul Massie plays Jekyll/Hyde, and in a twist, it is the good doctor that is presented as more hirsute and Hyde as clean shaven. Dawn Addams is Kitty, Jekyll’s wife, who is carrying on an affair with Paul Allen (I seriously could not hear that name without thinking of Microsoft), played by Christopher Lee, who was the film’s only real saving grace. Most cinematic productions of this story make a meal of the transformation in the same way most directors lavish money, time, and creativity on the creation sequence in any Frankenstein movie, but not here. I suspect this was due to a lack of funds; Hammer productions were often resource and time strapped. Here, Jekyll would find some reason to hide his face from the camera, slumping on the desk, turning away, and so on; the camera would move away and then back again to reveal Massie now presenting as Hyde or vice versa.

I can’t say this movie was very engaging. Certainly, my mind wandered, and I found myself just longing for scenes with either Christopher Lee because he always brought his best game, or Dawn Addams because she was a very attractive redhead with a most charming smile.

Overall, I am glad to have seen another Hammer film, but it is not one I shall be revisiting.

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Revisiting Saint Maud

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I reviewed Saint Maud in 2021 when it became available on the Paramount+ streaming network, and you can find that review here. I enjoyed the feature, finding it compelling and a terrifying gaze into a broken mind. This rewatch was prompted by the podcast Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9 when for this week’s show they rolled ‘religion’ as the scare and ‘2010s’ for the style and settled on Saint Maud as the subject that fit those parameters.

A24 studios

Saint Maud is the story of Maud (Morfydd Clark), a palliative caregiver, newly converted and deeply committed to her faith, convinced that God speaks to her through her physical pain and that he has some terribly important role for her to play in life. When she is assigned to a dying cancer patient, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), Maud becomes convinced that saving this woman’s soul is that higher purpose.

Amanda, a dancer and author, is a woman far from the grace of traditional Christianity and a lesbian. She ends up mocking Maud’s faith, particularly when Maud intercedes with a sex worker Amanda has hired, trying to break off that relationship, setting the two women on a tragic collision course of fate.

Throughout the course of the film, we discover that Maud’s mind was shattered by a tragic and terrible event at the hospital where she once worked, causing the religious conversion and the adoption of this new identity. Maud’s miraculous interactions with God take place when she is isolated and alone, leaving the audience to decide if these are real or products of a deranged and damaged mind. (The very final shot of the film, I believe, settles that question.)

In 2021, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had not yet debuted, and I hadn’t seen Morfydd Clark in anything save Saint Maud. In this film, she plays an attractive woman who has transformed herself into someone very plain, eschewing overt attractiveness and sexuality. As Galadriel, she is glammed up, with all of the performer’s natural beauty enhanced, becoming nearly unworldly. It is a testament to what subtle make-up and costuming can achieve.

Does Saint Maud hold up?

Oh yes, I think it does. The cinematography by Ben Fordesman continues to impress with a very keen eye in using very shallow focus to give shots a subjective interiority that pulls you into Maud’s frame of mind. Rose Glass’ script and direction are just as powerful today in 2025 as they were in 2019 when the film was released. Saint Maud is not a story that is only supported by the culture and events of the time of its creation.

It is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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A Most Unique Adaptation

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In the 1930s, the major studios of Hollywood each had a ‘brand’ of movies that they were best known for: MGM for glitzy, polished, and extravagant films; Paramount for movies with an air of European artistry; Warner Brothers for gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines stories; and Universal, of course, was the House of Horror and the Universal Monsters.

Warner Brothers Studios

Because Universal’s best-known and best-at-filling-theaters monsters were adaptations of classic novels that were in the public domain, they could not keep Dracula and Frankenstein all to themselves. As such, there have been nearly countless remakes and adaptations of the novels, often taking the course of making Dracula a love story stretching across centuries (an aspect not found in the source material) and, with Frankenstein, making the creature more and more sympathetic (an element found in the novel) until it was elevated to heroic status.

Next spring, writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal will give us perhaps the most unique adaptation of a classic Universal Monster with her feature film The Bride!

Starring Christian Bale as the Creature and Jessie Buckley as The Bride, Gyllenhaal reimagines the Frankenstein myth. It may have started as a novel, but I feel Mary Shelley’s tale has evolved into myth, as something that might have come out of Warner Brothers’ studios in the late 1930s: a prohibition-era gangster movie.

This take is so wild, so out of the box, that I think I may have no choice but to see it in the theater, giving it my attention as a reward for its sheer audacity.

 

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