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Thanksgiving (The movie)

So I just saw this horror movie and surprisingly it managed to be better than I expected. Which is doubly surprising since its based on the “fake trailer” that Eli Roth did way back in 2007 for the movie Grindhouse.

Combined with the amount of time relevancy that had passed and the excessively over the top hilarious cheese factor from the fake trailer, there was a good chance that this movie was going to suck a lot or be very mediocre compared to the fake trailer which had the benefit of not being very long so Eli could just shove in all the good bits (His exact words when first asked to do the trailer in 2007)

So it’s a slasher movie at its core and they do the whole “Who is the slasher” thing as opposed to the unstoppable supernatural slasher ala Jason/Freddy. Honestly, it’s pretty easy to guess who the slasher is from the start (Or close to the start) even if they try to throw in red herrings every now and then. But you’re not really watching this for the mystery factor anyway.

One thing that they don’t do which was very welcome was they didn’t do the whole Scream meta/breaking the 4th wall bullshit that has gone on far too long in fucking horror movies. 

Like yeah a few times it was alright (Though I never was a fan of it) but seriously just have a regular slasher movie, we don’t need some faggot going on about a goddamn play by play of “the horror movie rules”

Of course that’s the trouble with slashers, they’re fairly predictable so they need to really stand out to be half way memorable. Having gruesome unique kills typically works, along with a theme.

Thanksgiving does manage to achieve this for the most part. 

The other big one is how entertaining the slasher is himself (Or herself sometimes). “John Carver” is alright I suppose. He’s no Art the Clown, but the whole killer pilgrim thing works for him. He’s ultimately just a normal guy not an undead terminator, but he does pull off a few “impossible slasher tasks” in at least one major instance since he changes up his style which you don’t normally see since slashers tend to be a bit one dimensional with how they kill. 

Oddly, the victims aren’t even excessively annoying. I mean you don’t really care if they get killed still, but there’s really only a couple where you’re like “Yeah I’m glad they’re dead.”

Now if you’re at all into horror movie and have been for a long time because you’re OLD like me, you’ll probably wonder if the movie had any of the stuff that was in the Grindhouse Fake Trailer and the answer to that is, they do have a few scenes. 

Some of the bits aren’t in there at all, and two of the more infamous scenes from that fake trailer have been toned down, which wasn’t too surprising since this was going a bit more for a mainstream audience and you can’t have butcher knives going into a cheerleader’s pussy or the killer fucking a corpse cooked like a turkey. 

They also were playing this movie a bit more serious than the fake trailer, so the intentional over the top dialog is mildly toned down a bit, though they do have the killer at one point saying “There will be no left overs.” Though it really missed the opportunity to say “White meat, dark meat, all will be carved.” when he’s got the black guy and the white folks hostage. 

It still does have the dark humor moments, most notably near the beginning which sets everything in motion anyway. There’s a mild massacre at the Right Mart (This world’s Walmart I guess) store during a Black Friday which is sort of funny.

Anyway, if you’re into horror movies with enough bloody kills to appease your inner Khorne, its worth watching.

And here's the fake trailer from Grindhouse if you haven't seen that before (I know some of you are still practically babies on this site)

Thanksgiving Grindhouse Fake Trailer

This about sums it up.

Silent Night (The movie)

So after realizing that Napoleon was just going to be a cuckfest, I wisely skipped that movie and waited until Silent Night came out instead.

Well I saw it and while it was about what I expected based on the trailers, there were a few bits that made it stand out a bit.

The main thing is it has absolutely no dialog, other than screams, grunts, groans, muffled voices and maybe some unintelligible lyrics from a song playing in the background at one point.

While I knew the protagonist wasn’t going to be able to speak, I didn’t know they were going to do that for everyone in the movie. But again, it’s a revenge action flick, you really don’t need much talking anyway.

Speaking of the revenge plot, if you’ve seen the trailers, the protag’s son gets killed in a gang war shoot out. The movie actually starts off a little after that scene happens since the protag is chasing down the gangster’s cars (Which are still shooting it out) and ultimately the gang leader lives and shoots the protag in the neck and leaves him for dead. And well, we go from there.

After that bit, its sort of a slow burn until the last half hour. You see a lot of grief, followed by consuming rage and preparing himself for REVENGE. Naturally this doesn’t have a great effect on his marriage, so by the end of it all, he’s pretty much got nothing left but revenge.

And seeing as this is a revenge flick, you sort of already know how its going to end. This one though probably tries to go a little more on the emotional side though since it really tries to emphasize that he’s pretty much destroyed by the death of his son and he’s not coming back from this, even if he “wins”.

The dude isn’t Keanu Reeves (Or Charles Bronson, if you’re BOOMER enough to remember the original Death Wish series). There’s more than a few times where in his beginning stages of revenge he’s not the one man killing machine even if he’s trained himself to be one. He fucks up a few times (More than a few times).

Of course by the last half hour of the movie, it’s a bloodbath shootingfest.

Besides the obvious comparisons to John Wick or ye olde Death Wish movies, one movie series that obviously had some influence was the original Mad Max. Despite this taking place in present day America, there is actually a lot more car combat than I was expecting. That was cool of course, but more than just that, there’s a music box that the protagonist keeps winding up occasionally, which reminded me of what Mad Max did in the Road Warrior.

There’s sort of a “B-plot” too, involving a detective that works the gangland unit investigations. I sort of thought he might be in it a little more than he actually was, but his role is pretty minimal. Isn’t really until the end where he becomes helpful.

The detective is also a black dude, so it probably makes the movie look a little less “racist” if he’s helping an angry blonde white guy killing a bunch of brown people. Though to be fair, the protagonist’s wife (and dead son for that matter) are Mexican and the ones he's killing ARE violent criminals, so it’s not really racist. That’s just a hilarious coincidence. (Fully expect to see some faggot critics saying that it's RACIST for the very thing I just mentioned though)

Anyway if you’re into revenge action movies, it’s worth a watch.

Godzilla Minus Zero (The movie)

Well after everyone in the discord raved about this movie (And by everyone, I mean Malk and Cricket) not wishing to look like an outsider, I decided to follow the norms of the community for today by going to see Godzilla.

And it yeah, it actually was pretty cool. Honestly, I haven’t really been invested in Godzilla movies for a long time. I used to watch the old ones on TV when they came on Creature Feature or some similar horror based Saturday afternoon/night show back in the day.

A lot of the later ones just haven’t caught my attention too much. Last one I saw and really only in passing was King of the Monsters and it was meh.

If you know anything about Godzilla movies, then you know the plot is pretty simple. It’s a giant radioactive lizard destroying shit. Sometimes he’s fighting other monsters. (He’s not fighting other monsters in this one)

I think this one worked for me on a few levels. For one, Godzilla sort of wasn’t even the main focus. I mean he was, but the story itself revolved more around the tortured protagonist.

And granted I’m not excessively into the whole ongoing angsty protagonist bit for most movies, but the fact that this guy was a kamikaze pilot who failed to do the whole kamikaze thing and was upset about his cowardice (As well as failing to shoot Godzilla the first time he met him), made it a little bit more interesting. Not to mention this is a guy who was serving under the AXIS POWERS at one point, which technically made him a villain protagonist. (Okay, probably not, but more on the nationalism tones later)

All the other characters were fine too in the roles that they played. Didn’t find any of them to really be useless or annoying. The fact that it was set nearly right after WW2 made it a little different too.

Basically the American government are too focused on the Soviets to help in a military way and the Japanese government doesn’t want to help directly so they’re trying to keep the whole thing quiet. (Lol good luck keeping Godzilla quiet) so it’s up to the common Japanese folks to handle Godzilla with a few bits of military equipment that they’re allowed to use.

While its not like the movie was celebrating the Rape of Nanking or Unit 731, the movie definitely has a nationalistic bent to it. They try to temper this a bit by the characters fighting Godzilla occasionally criticizing the Japanese government rather than the military/people, but yeah, it’s still there and honestly that makes it even better. There's been talk of Japan lately wanting to re-militarize in a major way, so I'm wondering if the movie was a statement about that.

Hell, I mean if they don't have a military, how are they going to protect themselves from giant reptiles?

Speaking of Godzilla, probably what made this movie more appealing is the fact that it’s Godzilla being a “bad guy” again. I know they flip back and forth with him a lot. Usually he’s a good guy if other monsters are involved, but really I like seeing the back to basics, giant lizard just fucking up Japan because fuck you that’s why. It's sort of funny how he powers up like some sort of Pokemon for his breath weapon though. It's not just a radioactive fire beam either now, it's basically a small nuke.

The ending of the movie was even wholesome.

Anyway, yeah I liked it a lot.

The Iron Claw (The movie)

Alright, so this is essentially about a family that was into professional wrestling and also how each one of them died one by one (Save for one).

So its a feel good movie for the holidays!

Anyway, if you’re into wrestling like I know a few of you are, you might already know about the Von Erich family and the “curse” they had. Whether you actually believe in such things or not, one can certainly say “Yeah, their family sure had a lot of tragedy.”

I’m not spoiling anything since their story has probably been better documented on something like Darkside of the Ring, but the movie is still worth a watch, especially if you want to compare it to the real life situation.

Which brings to the point that the movie probably in the interest in not being a complete depression quest fest, toned down some of the aspects.

For one, they focus on 4 brothers Kevin, Kerry, David and Mike, when there actually was a 5th brother named Chris. (And I’m not even counting the 6th one who was technically the oldest, Jack Jr. that died by getting electrocuted when he was about 6 years old) Having one less brother that popped his cork certainly tones down a little of the tragedy.

What they sort of did was combine Chris into Mike’s character since both of them weren’t really quite as gung ho about being wrestlers and were shoved into. Granted all the of the brothers were, but those two just didn’t have the talent/desire at all and in both cases it lead to suicide due to frustration/injury/depression/etc.

Then there’s some of the stuff surrounding the deaths. In David’s case, he’s officially said to have died of a rupture of the intestines which is what they go with in the movie. However, there’s another story that he died of an accidental drug overdose while in Tokyo for a match with Ric Flair and one of the other wrestlers (Bruiser Brody) flushed the drugs down the toilet trying to cover for him. And David also had a daughter who died, which isn’t in the movie, but again its another example of there was no way they could include all the damn tragedy.

Also from most things that have been said and written about him, their dad, Fritz Von Erich was a 1st class ASSHOLE to his sons. Now it does show him to be definitely one of those competitive sports dads that pushes his kids hard and uncompromising, but the movie probably didn’t show how bad he really was. Hell, the brother who wasn’t in the movie, Chris was way shorter, had asthma and brittle bones, but he got shoved into wrestling by his dad due to Mike dying (And Mike got shoved in due to David dying!) he had no business in the ring.

Yep, Fritz was a major dickhead. Funny enough back in his wrestling days, he’d taken on the persona of a Nazi heel hence the name Von Erich. Guess it came natural.

Now while the movie takes more of Kevin’s point of view which is understandable since he’s the only one that lived and it does show how popular he was, I honestly don’t remember him at all (Really don’t remember any of the brothers except one I’ll get to in a moment). Probably because it was still during the wrestling territory days and he just wasn’t on the channels that I watched since the Von Erichs were more famous in Texas and the southern states. I didn’t really get into watching wrestling until around the rise of WWF which was more prominent in the northern states.

Which is why I always figured Kerry (Or the Texas Tornado as he was known) was the most successful of the bunch considering he made it to the WWF during its height, but as always the business is fickle and he had a shitload of drug problems mostly due to the pain that he was wrestling with no foot.

He’d lost it in a motorcycle accident even before he made it big, so its sort of impressive he actually made it and was genuinely popular for a few years in WWF. I know back then none of us had any idea he only had one fucking foot. Of course that’s all thanks to no internet back then and the magic of TV and putting on a good show.

However like I said, the good years didn’t last and he was addicted to drugs, marriage failing, possibly going to jail for parole violation so he shot himself since he figured he was going to die soon anyway and figured he’d join his brothers. They didn’t include his conversation with Brett Hart who thought at the time that he’d talked him out of killing himself (Brett said his daughters would need him more than his brothers would.) But I noticed they kept WWF references to a minimum anyway.

In the end of course they focus more on Kevin “breaking the curse” by focusing on his own family.  Ends with a mention of him having 4 kids and 13 grandkids. Technically only 2 of the kids were his, the other two kids were from his brother Kerry, but you get the idea. They managed to replenish enough Von Erichs to make up for all the dead ones.

There was also the mention that the Von Erich family had been inducted into the WWE Hall of fame back whenever that happened.

Doesn’t mention that Fritz and his wife got a divorce just before Kerry committed suicide. After several dead sons, I guess she was finally done with his bullshit.

Well anyway it's a movie, so I didn’t expect it to be completely accurate to begin with.

It probably would have beaten Thanksgiving in body count. Lol.

Or rather part 2 of the new Dune adaptation.

Not much to say about it, other than I actually liked this second part better than the first part. Always cool to see Christopher Walken in a new movie as well.

Again about the only major complaint is the portrayal of Baron Harkonnan who just really comes off as bland compared to the 1984 movie or the mini-series. Oddly I think his nephew Rabban got slightly more focus than him or Feyd during this adaptation. And Feyd just sort of showed up to get killed.

Anyway, it's essentially a story about a civilized white guy saving a bunch of sand dwelling brown people from degenerate gay pedophile rulers in his quest for vengeance. Oh and there's some giant worms. What's not to like?

Time to necro this thread since there were actually some movies worth going to see this month. I guess I’ll go in order of when I saw them.

Last Night With the Devil

This one I went in expecting to be pretty good and it actually delivered. Always nice when that happens.

This one is set in the 70s and is done in a found footage format, though it isn’t like that bullshit Blair Witch Project shit. It’s supposed to be the unaired episode of this famous talk show “Night Owls with Jack Delroy”

Basically Jack is a down on his luck talk show host who is currently trying to beat Johnny Carson in the ratings game and he’s failing miserably. Things get worse when his wife dies of cancer and his drive starts going out the window because of it and he also start focusing on less serious talk show interviews and going for shock value shit like fake psychics and such.

Of course it all comes to a head on this very last show that never aired.

You sort of already know this is all going to end in tragedy due to it being a found footage film anyway, but as they say it’s the journey that counts.

This movie does a really good job of capturing the 70s talk show scene and what was considered the “wacky fringe” element at the time. In real life there definitely were a lot of fake psychics and such popping up on these shows claiming they could bend spoons and all that shit. There was also a well known skeptic called James Randi who used to go around debunking all of them.

They got a character very similar to Randi and another guy who is more of a conglomeration of all those fake psychics, though he looks the most similar to a man named James Hydrick, even dressed like him and had the same pedo mustache (Appropriate since Hydrick actually was a big fucking pedo)

Around this time the whole interest in the occult and SATANISM started becoming big too, so that was another added element and it really wouldn’t be complete without a little girl being possessed by some demon/devil.

Also kept the footage looking like something out of the 70s too so overall it’s really good at maintaining period piece setting, which is probably what made me like it the most since I do remember some of that time period (And because nothing completely changes when a new decade starts, a lot of that late 70s stuff was still carried over into the early 80s).

As far as gore/blood content, it mostly saves that for the end and even then it’s not too much.

Worth a watch.

The First Omen

Now with this one I actually wasn’t expecting much. I figured it would be mediocre at best and complete shit at worst. Turned out to be way better than expected which is also nice when that happens.

This one also takes place in the early 70s, but it had to anyway since if you’re familiar at all with the original “The Omen” series that one started in the 70s and this is supposed to be a prequel to it.

As a general rule a prequel can easily fuck up continuity if you’re not paying attention to shit. This one does do some minor retconning, but to be fair even the immediate sequel to the original Omen did a bit of retconning, so meh. Plus you can sort of get away with it a bit more in horror movies.

This one would also be another one where you know how it’s going to end because Damien is going to get born no matter what happens to set off the events in The Omen, but again it’s journey that’s important.

So there is a twist in it, but really it’s pretty easy to spot early on. I imagine this was done to try to make the movie less predictable due to the outcome being certain. It doesn’t make the movie bad or anything, it’s just you already see it coming especially if you’ve watched enough horror movies with devil/demon shit in them.

One thing I did like which isn’t really a spoiler is they apparently decided to ditch the whole cabal of devil worshippers setting up the birth of the Anti-Christ plan from the original movies to a group of fanatical Catholic Church priests, nuns and cardinals doing it.

So why the hell would they do this?

Well the Catholic Church used to be a major power for thousands of years and in more recent times it’s become a lot weaker. These folks want the power that the church used to have in the olden days. They decide the only way to combat secularism is to prove that shit in the Bible is real and they figure they can get people to believe and come back to the church is by giving the people something to fear.

And the best way to do that is to bring about the birth of the fucking Anti-Christ! They also figured they’d be able to control him so things don’t get too out of hand. Basically bringing just enough evil into the world so people will go back to church.

This as you might expect is an incredibly BAD plan.

Anyway, this one has a few more bloody bits than the other demon movie I just mentioned, but spaces it out a bit more throughout the movie. Might as well spoil this bit since it was sort of surprising that they showed it, but at one point you get a HUGE CLOSE UP of a vagina with a demon hand coming out of it.

It isn’t often they put something like that in mainstream horror movies so it definitely got an extra point for me because of it.

Overall, it’s worth a watch, especially if you’ve already watched the other older movies in the series. And if you haven’t, those are mostly worth a watch as well. The first two are cool. The third one is sort of meh and don’t even bother with the fourth one since it sucks a lot. The Omen remake is okay, though they make Damien a little too obviously evil in that one, worked better when he just seemed like a clueless little kid.

Civil War

And finally I just saw this one and it could have gone either way, but thankfully it ended being cool.

First off I sort of came in thinking the movie was going to be semi-left wing propaganda, but the movie does a pretty good job of staying politically neutral. I imagine that’s why they had California and Texas allied with each other to keep you wondering how the fuck the President fucked up so badly to make those two ally with each other. You sort of only get a few hints of what he did such as disbanding the FBI, bombing American citizens, staying in power for a third term and a few other things.

Basic premise is its a road trip movie with a bunch of war journalists. Two of them are trying to get to DC to do an interview with the president, the old fat journalist is trying to get to Charlottesville to get a story from the front lines. And finally there’s a young girl who is an aspiring war journalist who manages to tag along too.

It’s a series of pit stops where they encounter various people and have to deal with what happens to be going on at the time at these locations. They’re mostly “safe” due to their Press IDs, but much like in real life that isn’t a certainty when bullets are flying or dealing with people who don’t give a shit. The action shoot out scenes are done pretty well and the final showdown in DC is even better.

While you do get to learn a little bit about the main characters, you still don’t learn much. While it’s not really a case where you don’t care if they live or die (Hell there was one character I was surprised they survived), but they don’t seem important in the scheme of things, and maybe that was the point. Even the President (THE VILLAIN) isn’t all that impressive the few times you do see him. Ultimately the movie is probably carried more by the premise rather than excessively strong characters.

And maybe because of that, the movie almost felt like a video game. Especially since the young female character looked like Ellie from The Last of Us (Hell, she even looked a little like Ellen Page who that character was clearly modeled off of) and the way she’s going about snapping pics towards the end of the movie just seemed very video game like. (AKA Dead Rising) The pit stops they make felt a little like that game Road 96 which is based around a series of pit stops on your way to escaping a country in the midst of a civil war/rebellion.

Arguably the most memorable character is the one from the trailer and if you’ve seen the trailer, you already know it’s the soldier with the red tinted glasses asking “What kind of Americans” they all are and he’s just some unnamed soldier.

In any case, it’s worth a watch.

Saw Anatomy of a Fall. Super cool movie with basically only perfect performances all around. Makes it even weirder that that fucking lightweight Emma Stone cinched the Oscar. Gonna watch Killers of the Flower Moon next probably