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Hello ladies and gents!

I hope everyone is acclimating to one of the scarier parts of the year… daylight savings time. To be perfectly frank with all of you, I’m still in a mild horror depression and my recent watches have done nothing to dissuade of my previous opinion. In fact, they have continued to confirm my prior hypothesis on prioritizing attempted depth of character and story in lieu of actual frights. “It’s not the demons out there but the ones that live inside all of us,” type of messaging. 

Anywho, I’ll spare you all another long tirad and also say that despite the first two flicks on this list being flops for me, the third film was VERY good. Albeit being a little over a year old at this point, it nonetheless gives me hope for some quality cinema to come. So without further adieu, let’s talk about some “scary” movies…

I’m going to start off with the most recent of the three in the form of a Shudder film called, Slapface. Now, I do want to preface here that I love Shudder. I think they have some of the best horror movies in one place. And they’re originals are usually pretty good as well. I say that to say that the highly touted Slapface did not impress. The film follows two brothers adapting to life after the death of their parents in a car accident. While the older brother struggles to play both parent and sibling, the younger brother seeks out contact with a witch that supposedly lives in a nearby abandoned building. 

Well needless to say he finds her and the two strike up a very strange relationship. However, their companionship turns sinister when the witch kills the young boy’s best friend. And soon after this incident, the body count begins to pile up in a rather unbelievable way. As usual, I won’t give away any real spoilers so I’ll just leave you with my final thoughts… 

Slapface had good intentions. But these were corrupted by mediocre acting, some rather glaring plot holes and most importantly, a lack of actual terror. While the witch is not pretty to look at, she’s not altogether terrifying. She is also presented as more of a human with some special powers and a maternal, but also deadly, instinct. Which is fine if done well like it was in Mama (loved that film by the way). But unfortunately it wasn’t and it didn’t work for me.

And the last thing I will say is that the underlying theme of abuse coupled with the aspect of loss can play very well in horror. But in Slapface the agenda is pushed too hard to where it goes past obvious and into a space where the blatant angles on these issues crush what could have been a quality scary movie. 

The next film on our list is the underwater haunted house flick known as, The Deep House. I mean… if this isn’t the epitome of what I’m talking about in the decline of horror then I don’t know what is! It’s literally a haunted house at the bottom of a lake. Why did it need to be at the bottom of a lake!?!? The short and narrow of it is a couple abroad in Europe stumble upon the legend of a submerged house that’s perfectly preserved under a lake. But of course, once they dive down and enter this watery abode they soon find a dark secret inside… 

I could give you more but that’s really all you need. There is nothing new or exciting about this film apart from the half-baked idea to place the house underwater. I suppose one could argue the divers running out of oxygen combined with the claustrophobic feel of the home adds an element of dread but apart from a couple jump scares (which I love… when done right) this film fell short of the mark for me. 

Again, my biggest gripe is that this didn’t have to be filmed underwater. I think that was a concept that hadn’t been done before and the studio said, “Well that’s a new one, let’s go for it!” The diving masks made it so that you can’t really see the characters’ faces and something is lost in not fully watching the emotion that arises in certain instances. This could have been a much scarier, much more interesting film had they just stuck to the old haunted house in the woods plot and not tried to be so outside the box. 

And the final film I will drop in here was in fact a very good horror movie AND allowed for some allegorical subtext about living within a fringe group and the personal and inherited traumas that coincide. The Vigil takes place in a Hasidic neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. A young man accepts an offer from his former rabbi to watch over the body of a recently deceased member of the community. But once inside the home, things start to go wrong for him very quickly. 

Now, this film worked for multiple reasons. The first being the setting. This was clearly a low-budget film and it is almost solely shot within the apartment of the deceased. But Writer/Director Keith Thomas does such a good job utilizing this claustrophobic space that the previous monetary fact quickly fades away. It’s dark and ominous and allows for the viewer’s mind to anticipate things that may or may not come to fruition.   

It’s well acted and unpredictable. The Vigil took the “haunted house” concept and not only made it work in a small apartment in New York, but there were points where I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen next. This poor confused young man is going through a supernatural yet self-identifying experience that works just as well on a psychological level as it does on a terror level. And that in itself is something to be applauded given the current state of this genre. 

And finally, the scares were spot on. Not overdone or thrown in wherever they could. But tastefully interjected to further the story and allow for those moments I mentioned before where something scary could happen, but it also may not… It reminded me in a shrunken down way of the Ti West film, The Innkeepers. Which If you haven’t seen, is horrifying in its own right. So all in all, well done Keith! You’re keeping my horror spirit alive. 

And that’s going to do it for me this week friends. As I’ve said, I am going to try my best to get these posts out weekly, but between life, work, and other such events, I can’t make any promises at the present moment. But I can promise I will keep you updated as best I can not only concerning these posts but where season two of The Grave is at as well! So, as always folks, thanks for reading and stay tuned for some more creepy content.

❤

Josh