Wednesday, June 29, 2016

The Conjuring 2 Movie Review 397



  



The Conjuring 2 is a 2016 horror movie sequel directed by James Wan and starring Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga and Frances O 'Connor.


This film is based on a case from the 1970's in Britain where a young girl claimed that there was a poltergeist in her house and strange things happened in the house in Enfield, London. Many people had investigated- some were sceptical and some believed her. The movie begins with Ed Warren(Wilson) and his wife Lorraine(Farmiga)  investigating the Amityville haunting. Lorraine sees a demonic nun and has an awful vision of Ed being impaled on something sharp. It upsets her. Cut to 1977 and a young girl called Janet (Madison Wolfe) is having strange dreams and she is sleepwalking. She thinks that there is someone talking to her. Her mother Peggy(O' Connor) sees it too and the family begin to get scared that there is something in the house with them. The media gets involved and things get worse until the Warrens are brought in to help.


Lorraine feels reluctant to help as she is worried about her vision and she sees the creepy nun again and she says her name which she writes into her bible without realising it. They go to London to visit the family. They discover that the entity in the house is an old man called Bill Wilkins and he wants them out of his house. He speaks through Janet. The Warrens investigate and try to talk to Bill.
He wants them out of the house. Ed tries to reason with him. They see Janet being possessed and believe that she is being haunted but there is doubt when they see a video of Janet deliberately setting something up to make it look as if the entity did it. They decide to leave.


They realise after they have left that Bill was being used by the demonic nun. They return to the house and face up to the demon. Lorraine gets stuck with it and she remembers the name that she had written in her bible. She calls it by its name and sends it back to Hell. She also saves Ed from being impaled on a tree trunk so her vision doesn't come true. The movie ends with an epilogue telling us that Peggy lived in the house until her death and she died in the same chair that Bill died in years ago. The Warrens leave and take a memento with them to add to their collection. They dance to Elvis and all is well.




This movie was good. It was creepy in parts. That nun was pretty creepy and I liked the story, even if I didn't believe that it really happened. It is well made and I enjoyed it all the way through.
I think that there will be a sequel so I am looking forward to that. Watch this if you enjoyed Insidious or the first Conjuring movie. I will give it an 8/10.


Friday, June 24, 2016

The Witch Movie Review 396






The Witch is a 2015 horror movie directed by Robert Eggers and starring Ralph Ineson, Anna Taylor-Joy and Kate Dickie.


The movie is set in New England in the 1600's and deals with a Puritan family led by William(Ineson) who gets his family banished from a plantation where they were living for some reason. The family have to go and live out in the wilderness near a creepy wood. The mother, Katherine(Dickie) gives birth to another child. She already has two daughters and two sons. The baby is called Samuel. Their daughter is Thomasin(Taylor-Joy) and they have twins called Mercy and Jonas. Their other son is called Caleb. One day, Thomas is taking care of Samuel when he disappears. In reality, he has been taken by a witch who lives in the woods who kills him and uses his blood for herself.


The family are devastated by the loss of the child. William takes Caleb hunting in the woods and they have a strange chat about Samuel etc. Back at the farm, the twins are pretending that they can talk to their black goat who is called Black Phillip. Thomasin gets fed up with it and she tells the twins that she is a witch, They believe her. Katherine begins to blame her for the disappearance of Samuel. The next day, Caleb is going hunting alone when Thomasin insists on going with him into the woods. They get into trouble when their dog chases a hare and disappears into the woods. Caleb follows, leaving Thomasin alone. She gets thrown from her horse and knocked out. Caleb finds his dog dead.
He finds a shack in the woods and a young woman comes out and brings him inside. It is the witch in disguise.Thomasin manages to find her way out and runs into her dad.


Caleb returns naked and in a bad way. He is very ill and Katherine blames Thomasin. He dies after saying a prayer and the twins tell her that Thomasin is a witch and that is why these things are happening. The parents don't know what to think and when Thomasin tells her parents that the twins have been talking to the goat i.e the Devil, William locks them all in a shed. That night, the witch visits and drinks the blood of the animals. Katherine sees her dead children and goes a bit mad. William goes down the next day to the shed and finds the animals dead, the twins gone and Thomasin with blood on her. 


William gets gored by Black Phillip and dies. Katherine sees this and blames Thomasin and tries to kill her. Thomasin kills her in self defence. She goes to see Black Phillip and asks him to talk to her which he does. He is the Devil and he offers her whatever she wants if she puts her name in his book.
She does so and then she goes out to the woods and finds a witches coven and joins in willingly. The film ends with her being lifted in the air and becoming a witch. This film was entertaining. It was creepy in parts. Some parts were a little slow, but on the whole, it was good. I liked the sense of dread that runs through this and even though the ending was a bit off, this is worth a watch if you enjoy a solid horror movie. I will give it a 7/10.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Fatal Attraction Movie Review 395






Fatal Attraction is a 1987 thriller directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer.


Dan Gallagher(Douglas) is an attorney in New York and he is married to Beth(Archer) and has a daughter, Ellen. He meets a woman called Alex(Close) who is an editor. They chat and get on well. There is chemistry there immediately. When Beth is out of town for the weekend with Ellen, he and Alex have a steamy one night encounter. Dan thinks that that is the end of it, but Alex doesn't feel the same way. She calls him, wanting him to come over to her place. When he does, he tries to tell her that he doesn't want to get into anything serious with her. She slashes her wrists and he has to stay and help her. After this, he thinks that that will be the end of it, but she turns up at his office and wants to meet up again. He turns her down. She keeps calling him and trying to get his attention by telling him that she is pregnant which she is not.


He is moving away with his family and he thinks that this will end his contact with her, but he is wrong. She turns up at the house that he is selling and meets his wife. When Dan discovers this,he
goes to see Alex and threatens her. She fights back and he is worried that she is crazy. The family move away and Dan hopes that he is safe from Alex, but he is wrong.She starts to turn nasty and does evil things to him including boiling his daughters rabbit. Dan tries to get help from the cops, but there is not much he can do. Dan tells his wife about what happened and she is very upset. She throws him out. He tells Alex what he has done. Alex takes Ellen from school and has a afternoon out with her. She is nice to her and when Beth finds out she is horrified and drives around to find her daughter and gets into a car accident which lands her in the hospital.


Alex returns Ellen and the family reunite. Dan goes to see Alex and almost kills her for what she did but stops himself. He tries to get the cops to arrest her. She is at the house with Beth and she tries to kill her. Dan hears his wife screaming and he runs in to stop Alex. He drowns her in the bath. Of course, she comes back for one more scare and Beth shoots her dead. The police arrive and they tell them what happened. The movie ends with the family together, moving on.


This is a very good thriller, one of my favourites. I think that the cast is great and it is interesting to see the woman as the baddie who will not take no for an answer. The story is very good and it is well worth a watch if you have not seen it. I will give it an 8/10.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Shallow Grave Movie Review 394






Shallow Grave is a 1994 British thriller directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston and Kerry Fox.


Three professional people share a flat in Edinburgh. They are Alex(McGregor), David(Eccleston) and Juliet(Fox). They need another person to help pay the rent so they rent to a weird guy called Hugo(Keith Allen). He locks himself into his room and when they eventually open his door, they find him dead with a suitcase full of money. They have a dilemma on their hands. They decide not to call the cops and David cuts up his body and buries him in a grave in the woods. Juliet disposes of the pieces in the hospital incinerator and everything looks rosy for a while. Until some bad guys come looking for the money.


They break into the flat below them looking for the cash and Hugo and they are nasty. The three flatmates are very scared. This brings the cops calling and they talk to them about Hugo. They deny that he was there but the police are suspicious. Juliet and Alex spend some of the money but David is becoming odder by the moment. He takes the rest of the money and puts it into the attic and he stays up there with it and drills holes in the ceiling and watches the other two. This puts huge pressure on their relationship.


Eventually, the baddies realise that Hugo was living in the apartment with the trio and they come back. They attack Juliet and Alex and they find out where the money is. They get a surprise when David comes down from the attic and kills them with a hammer. He takes the bodies out to the woods and buries them. Alex and Juliet are worried that he is losing his mind and he thinks that they are plotting behind his back. The cops find the bodies and the noose tightens around the trio. In the end, everyone turns on each other and David ends up being killed by Juliet when he stabs Alex. Juliet leaves Alex to take the blame for everything. She thinks that she has the money in her bag as she heads to the airport but Alex has it under the floorboards. She leaves anyway and Alex is left in the flat to deal with the cops.


This was a very interesting thriller with a young Ewan McGregor and a good cast overall. It is darkly comical in parts but there is a serious side to it too. All in all, this is an entertaining movie with good performances from the leads. I will give this a 7/10.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Frenzy Movie Review 393







Frenzy is a 1972 thriller directed  by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jon Finch, Barry Foster and Alec McCowen.



The movie begins in London. There is a killer on the loose who is strangling women with a tie. The killer is a guy called Bob Rusk(Foster) and he seems a happy go lucky guy on the outside but inside, he is a twisted killer who hates women. His friend is called Richard Blaney(Finch)who does not know anything about his pals tendencies.Rusk goes in to see Blaney's ex-wife who happens to run a dating agency where he was a client before he got banned for being heavy handed with his dates.He tries it on with her and when she rejects him, he kills her by strangling her with a tie. Blaney is under suspicion as there was no love lost between them and he was seen coming out of her office. Rusk also murders Blaney's girlfriend and this makes Blaney look even more guilty.


Rusk tries to make Blaney look like the killer and the cops arrest him. The detective who is investigating the case, Inspector Oxford(McCowen) is not so sure that Blaney is the real killer. He doesn't have any evidence on Rusk yet. Blaney breaks out of jail and goes to Rusk's place as he realises that he set him up. Oxford knows that Blaney will go there, so he follows him. Blaney finds a dead body at Rusk's place and the cop sees it too. They hear Rusk coming so they hide and he is caught red handed with a trunk, getting ready to dispose of his latest victim. This ends the film.


This is a good thriller with an entertaining plot. Foster is good as the nonchalant killer who is happy to frame his good friend. It is one of Hitchcock's last films, but I would recommend it as there are some genuinely creepy scenes. Good cast and good story. I will give this a 7/10.