Funeral Home Movie Review

Trailer here.

Funeral Home is a 1980 horror movie directed by William Fruet and starring Kay Hawtrey, Lesleh Donaldson and Barry Morse.

Heather(Donaldson) is a young woman who arrives at her grandmother Maude's(Hawtrey) house to help her. Maude is converting her house, which was a funeral home, into a bed and breakfast. There is a weird guy called Billy(Stephen E. Miller) who lives there and works as a caretaker. A couple arrive at the house. They are called Mr. and Mrs. Browning. A man called Mr. Davis(Morse) is staying there too. Maude has someone locked away. The local cops are searching for a missing man. They ask Maude and she says that her husband disappeared too. Heather meets a local man called Rick(Dean Garbett). They like each other. Mrs. Browning tries to come on to Billy. She laughs at him. Maude discovers that Mr. and Mrs. Browning are not actually married. She is a religious woman and she wants them to leave.

They refuse to leave. That night to go for a quiet drive to a local quarry and they get killed. Rick and Heather go on a date. Heather discovers that the basement door is locked. She and Rick try to find a way in there. They get in and look around. Someone is there. They get out before Maude can catch them. She tells Heather not to go into the basement. Rick tells Heather that they used to go to the funeral home when they were kids and that her grandpa caught them and pushed them in there. There were dead people. Rick tells her that her grandpa was a mean man. Heather is at home when she hears noises coming from the basement. She sees Maude and she is talking to someone else. Maude knows that someone was watching. She comes looking for Heather, who pretends to be asleep.

Mr. Davis is looking for his wife who disappeared in the area. He knows that she came to Maude's. He asks Maude about it and she denies it. He talks to Billy about it. Heather overhears him. She tries to get back into the cellar. Mr. Davis is murdered. Someone buries him. Heather wonders where he went. The cops get a call from someone who is looking for Mr. Browning. A local girl sees the bodies in the lake.  This brings the cops to Maude's door.  Heather tells Rick that there is someone in the basement. Rick decides to look around. Billy wanders down there and gets killed.  Rick and Heather enter it and they find him. Maude appears and attacks Rick. She has gone insane. She tries to kill Heather too. The cops come and they find that Maude has had grandpa's corpse down in the basement. It turns out that she killed him and his girlfriend. Mr. Davis' wife was the girlfriend and when Maude discovered that her husband was having an affair, she killed them both. She also killed the missing people in the area. She is taken away.

This is an okay film. There were some good moments and some not so good ones. It is worth a look if you like 1980's slashers, but it is not one of the best. I found it okay but I wouldn't want to watch it again, really. I can think of better ones. I will give it a 4/10.

Troll Movie Review

Trailer here.

Troll is a 2022 Norwegian monster movie directed by Roar Uthaug and starring Ine Marie Wilmann and Mads Sjogard Pettersen.

The film begins with a girl climbing a mountain with her dad. It is called the Troll Peaks. There are legends of trolls who were turned into stone. She sees the faces of the trolls in the mountains. Cut to the Atlantic coast, Norway. That same girl is older now and her name is Nora(Wilmann). She is working as a paleontologist. She and others have been called in to investigate the deaths of workers in the mountains. They were drilling into it and the whole thing exploded. Nora wonders what is going on. She is the one who thinks that something odd is happening. There are shapes in the ground that look like footprints. The others think that it is ludicrous. The prime minister is involved and he sends a soldier called Captain Holm(Pettersen) to help them.

Nora meets with some military personnel who have video footage of some sort of creature. It seems to be roaring. The  team can't believe that it is a creature. Nora tries to tell them that it is. She wants to find out. She is made into a scientific advisor. She and the prime minister's aide, Andreas, go to find clues.

They go to a house which was ripped apart and they ask what happened. The owners of the house say that they heard weird howling. What could it be? Andreas and Nora visit her father. He has gone crazy. He is obsessed with trolls. Nora tells him about their find. He believes that it is a female troll.

They see it finally. There is no denying that it exists now.

Nora, her father and Andreas talk to Captain Holm. They want to go with him to get the creature. The army gets ready to attack it. Everyone waits and the troll emerges. The army are ordered to fire on it. They can't hurt it. It gets very angry.  Nora's father tries to talk to it. He gets hurt and dies. The others come up with plan to destroy it. The troll shows up at a theme park. People panic and run. The army and Nora play bells through a loudspeaker. The troll hates the noise. News of the troll goes all over the world. The prime minister decides to use missiles to get it. Andreas resigns and he joins Nora to try and get at the truth. They find out that the royal palace is built over the home of the troll king who was slaughtered along with his family. The troll is trying to go back to its home to be with its ancestors. Nora's dad found out about this and he was discredited.

They realise that sunlight can kill the troll. They need to stop the missile. Andreas has a friend who he asks to help stop the missile. It works. Captain Holm helps too. Nora and Andreas get a skeleton of a dead troll and they take it. The troll follows. It is very angry. The missile is back online as Andreas's pal gets found out. The army distracts the troll with lights as it is after Nora. It is upset about seeing the skeleton and Nora realises this. She turns off the lights to try and save it, but the sun comes up and destroys it. Everyone is delighted but Nora and Andrea think that there might be more. They seem to be right as something is coming back to life in the original mountain.

This was a really fun film. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I liked the idea of the trolls being woken up after a long time and coming back to get revenge etc. It is very entertaining. If you like a good monster movie, then this will be right up your street. It's good to see these kind of movies are being made in countries other than the US. It might be in Norwegian, but subtitles are okay. Don't let that put you off. I recommend this one if you can find it. It is well worth your time. I will give it a 6/10.

Havenhurst Movie Review

Trailer here.

Havenhurst is a 2016 horror movie directed by Andrew C. Erin and starring Julie Benz, Fionnula Flanagan and Danielle Harris.

The film begins with a girl Danielle(Harris) who is with her boyfriend in an apartment in New York. He gets killed and then she is chased and taken away. A woman called Jackie(Benz) is a recovering alcholic who moves into the same apartment complex. It is run by a woman called Eleanor(Flanagan) and her weird son, Ezra who is the caretaker. Eleanor takes people into her apartment complex who have had problems in their lives and she helps them turn their lives around. Jackie is a friend of Danielle's and she wants to know what happened to her friend. She asks around but she can't find out anything. She meets a child called Sarah. Her parents are bad people. One of the other tenants have been asked to leave. She is attacked. Jackie hears her screaming and she goes to see what is happening.

Jackie tells her friend Tim(Josh Stamberg) about it. He is a detective. She asks him to look into the tenant who she heard screaming. Sarah appears in Jackie's apartment and she has a key that Ezra gave her. She also has one of Danielle's cameras. Sarah's foster parents are taken away by unknown people and meet their end. Jackie finds Danielle's map of the building. She gives it to Tim. Jackie begins to go back to the booze. She looks at the pictures that she found of Danielle's camera. She thinks that there is a secret door in the laundry room. She opens the door and she finds an old office. There are files on people. She discovers that the building belonged to H.H.Holmes, a serial killer. She gets an eviction notice.

Jackie calls Tim and tells him about the secret office and who the building used to belong to. Sarah gets taken by someone. Jackie confronts Eleanor. Eleanor says that she won't be leaving the building. Jackie is grabbed by a man and she ends up finding a passage. She falls into a huge oven and she gets out just in time. She finds Sarah and they both try to escape. Sarah escapes, but Jackie pulled back inside by another of Eleanor's sons called Jed. He is a killer and he has been taking care of people who don't live up to Eleanor's standards. Jackie is no different. She gets punished for her drinking. The film ends with Tim coming over there with the cops to find her, but there is no evidence of her being there. Sarah is asked to join Eleanor and her two weird sons and she agrees.

I wasn't crazy about this one. It is a middle of the road horror film. The actors were okay and the story wasn't too bad, but I just didn't love it. The ending wasn't great either. Sometimes, you watch something and you don't love it or hate it. It is just alright. This is one of those films. For that reason, I will give it a 4/10.