Trick or Treat (2021) - Short Horror Film Review

Trick or Treat is a short eight and a bit minute film that was based on the book of the same name by Lindy Ryan. It features illustrations by Timea Gazdag and was narrated by Sam Shearon, with animation by Dan Walters. This was the winner of the Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Film at the Cult Critic Movie Awards 2021.

Alistair Grey is a young boy who is disillusioned by his school's trick or treat event. While he is dressed as a mummy he is disappointed that many of his classmates haven't dressed as scary monsters. He decides to head outside in search of real monsters, and along the way learns the true meaning of Halloween.

There wasn't much to dislike here, the short is made up of rhyming couplets, and geared for children it obviously wasn't designed to be frightening. It was interesting that the explanation for Halloween was actually informative, providing such explanations such as the purpose of lit pumpkins and the reason for treats. The illustrations are sparsely animated but they looked nice, obviously inspired by Tim Burton's style, as well as Lemony Snicket's The Dark (that later one something I'm not familiar with) while I thought the simple tune that plays throughout was effective, quite fairy tale like. All in all, aside from a few moments where I couldn't quite understand what lines were being said, this wasn't bad.

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Nightbooks (2021) - Children's Horror Film Review

I chose Nightbooks for review knowing nothing about it. I have a habit on Netflix of adding almost anything to my Netflix queue, so much so there are hundreds and hundreds of films and shows on it. Nightbooks is a children's horror film directed by David Yarovesky (Brightburn) and based on the book by J.A White. It seems Neflix does like to make films out of books as this follows on from the Fear Street trilogy that was released earlier this year. While this may be aimed at children (having a PG rating), I think I would have been terrified watching this as a child!

After an unknown incident Alex (Winslow Fegley) angrily rips horror film posters off of his bedroom walls and throws them, along with a heap of horror story books he has written into a rucksack and sneaks out of his apartment, all this to the accompiment of his parents argue about how weird he is in the background. The boy gets in the elevator but it breaks down, opening up on a strange floor of the apartment block he lives in. While walking down a passageway he spies an open doorway, one of his favourite films The Lost Boys is playing on a TV, while there is a fresh slice of pumpkin pie on a plate next to it. Unable to resist Alex enters the apartment but after trying the food passes out. He awakens to discover he is a prisoner of an evil witch named Natacha (Krysten Ritter - Jessica Jones). He soon finds another child, Yasmin (Lidya Jewett) who is also trapped. Both the children are forced to work as slaves for the witch, but for Alex, upon learning he writes scary stories he is told he must tell Natacha a scary story every single night. With the threat of death should his stories not scare, Alex begins to try and find a way to escape the witches magical apartment.

As a child I was quite cowardly. I did love monsters and have memories of constantly getting my parents to rent out the VHS of The Monster Squad, but I think Nightbooks would have been too much for me. Rather than pander to a younger audience this instead relies a lot on the techniques that adult horror films use. Light and shadow, partially glimpsed figures and swiftly edited shots are all impressive in creating a feel of horror. Sure, there isn't much actual peril the children are in, threatened with being transformed into living statues did seem like a fate worse than death but nothing much happens to them. Natacha isn't designed to look scary, more she has the appearance of someone dressing up in a witch costume for Halloween, but she certainly doesn't come across as nice in the slightest. This comes to the detriment of her character. While later on towards the film's finale there is a backstory provided for her, for the most part she is a kid version of a bad guy, bad for the sake of being bad without any concrete motivation for being so. I guess looking deeper it could be a comment about how sometimes people who are abused end up becoming abusers themselves but this evil for evil's sake element left her feeling a bit one dimensional.

The Addams Family (2019) - Children's Horror Film Review

I've once again come to the conclusion that I need to branch out more in the movies I watch for review. 99% of what I watch are new films that have been sent my way, yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of horror films out there that I have never so much as glanced at. At random I picked a film from my infinite Netflix list and it happened to be the 2019 animated children's horror The Addams Family.

Thirteen years after moving to New Jersey the Addams Family discover a new bright and cheerful town called Assimilation has been built near to their mansion by TV host Margaux Needler (Allison Janney - The Help, Juno). She is horrified to discover their family house and has designs to change it so that it conforms to her idea of beauty. Meanwhile Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz - Susperia, Carrie) has begun to get tired of her family and becomes friends with Margaux's daughter Parker (Elsie Fisher - Despicable Me), who likewise is looking for change. While this is all happening, Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard - It, Stranger Things) is preparing for a rite of passage, but his inability to conform to the standards set by his father Gomez (Oscar Isaac - Ex Machina) is also causing problems.

From the synopsis there is a clear idea that the moral being told here is that non conformity and individuality is a good thing and it shouldn't be seen as something to be against. People should be free to be who they want to be without judgement being passed if they are seen as different. This is a heavy handed message in that it bleeds into all aspects of the various storylines being told, but it is a relevant one. Being an animation rather than live action means that the horror aspect of the characters and setting can be more visually represented. From a sentient tree, to the house itself which has a voice there are many monsters and much madness here. Characters are very unrealistic in that all sorts of cartoon peril can befall them and they are perfectly fine, as to be expected and not a criticism.

Cripta (2019) - Teen Horror Film Review

Being slightly hungover on a Sunday I sat down to watch Marco Lui's Cripta, which I had assumed was a horror film. By the zany style and very low stakes it soon become clear this was something aimed at teens, and that to be honest it isn't horror. This is edutainment dressed up as a film, it is also a religious film, while not preachy at all, it does assume that the teachings of Christianity are true.

Cripta centres around six teen archaeology students who study their topic via web cam sessions with their professor. One day they sit down to do their class as usual but are instead met with a stranger. He informs the teens that their professor has been kidnapped and that if they want to free him they must play a game. So far so Saw. The intruder displays his powers by hypnotising the boys and manipulating the emotions of the girls, then he warns them if they fail the game they will die. The game is based on religious dogma, and centres mainly on the idea of baptism.

I guess it was good timing that I ended up watching a religious film on a Sunday. This is in Italian with English subtitles. Due to the subject matter it was quite hard to keep up with what was being spoken about, even in English that would have been hard to follow. The subtitles are ok, though on many occasions the subtitles seemed slightly wrong, and so I had to rearrange words and spellings in my head for them to make sense. I seem to remember one example being 'flash and bones' rather than 'flesh and bones'. This was nostalgic in a fashion as it reminded me of being back at school watching those programs that try and make the learning fun, as I said in my intro; edutainment.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - Children's Horror Film Review

Much as I was surprised that I didn't own the Disney stop-motion musical classic The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD or Blu-Ray earlier last week when I went to watch it I was also surprised that I had never reviewed it before on my blog. This is a film I'm sure virtually everyone is familiar with, one which weathered the love affair emo kids had with it in the early noughties and has once again returned to just being a great classic. I saw this when it was showing at the cinema originally, and have always been a big fan of this. It is a film that straddles the line between being a Christmas film and a Halloween one, this year I chose it as the first Christmas film I viewed for 2019.

Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon - Fright Night for the speaking voice, and Danny Elfman - Forbidden Zone for the singing voice) is the ruler of Halloween Town, and each Halloween in the real world he and his people 'invade' in order to make the event occur. Jack has grown tired of doing the same thing year after year though and yearns for something different. His prayers are answered when wandering one day he stumbles across a clearing in a forest which contains gateways into each of the other yearly special events. The Christmas door in particular draws his attention and so he enters, finding himself in Christmas Town. After his experience there he returns home, determined that the next years Christmas will be one done by him and his horrific subjects...

This was the first of the stop-motion films of Disney in the 90's and was also the best. This is helped by the typical Tim Burton Gothic aesthetic (Burton created the story and characters for this), and the typical playfully dramatic music of Danny Elfman. Throughout there are many songs and nearly all of them are great. From the introduction piece 'This is Halloween' to the festive feeling 'What's This?', and the usual villainous song in the form of 'Ooogie Boogie's Song'. There really isn't a bad song to be found here, from the sang numbers to instrumentals all work so well, unlike something such as The Corpse Bride which had mostly average songs. I guess here 'Making Christmas' is the worst one, visually appealing, showing as it does the contrast between Santa's Elves making presents, and the twisted Halloween Town version of this, but the song suffered due to not having a catchy chorus.

Goosebumps (2015) - Horror Film Review

I have never actually read any of the Goosebumps books by R.L Stine, they came a bit too late for me, I had moved onto Point Horror that was aimed at teens rather than the child demographic his books aimed for (all heresay of my own making). I do recall watching some of the TV episodes of the show, always seemed a bit cheesy. Any fears that not knowing his work would impact on my enjoyment of this film seem to be ill founded though.

Zach (Dylan Minnette) and his mum have recently moved to a small American town, he soon befriends his next door neighbour; Hannah (Odeya Rush) whose domineering father (Jack Black) makes Zach fear for her safety. Eventually he and his geeky best friend Champ (Ryan Lee) break into the house to check on the girl but in doing so stumble across a strange collection of Goosebumps books. Opening one of the locked books the boys accidentally release a monster, it seems that each of the books has trapped within it a Goosebumps monster. They soon learn Hannah's father is in fact R.L Stine; the author of the books and that his imagination as a child was so strong that he summoned into the world the monsters he writes about. One of the escaped entities is a ventriloquist dummy named Slappy, this twisted creature soon releases all of the monsters in a bid to get revenge on Stine for locking him up for so many years...