Tag Archives: horror

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Some Stephen King and Neil Gaiman books I have read lately!

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October is the right month for reading some darker horror and fantasy books, so I have been reading some stuff from one of my favourite writers of all times, Stephen King.

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For starters, there is one short novel/story that I finished in one day, namely Dolans Cadillac. This is not a horror story, it is rather thriller with a classic theme or motive and it is revenge. The main characters wife sees a mafia boss murder someone and for that she gets blown up in her car. Her husband seeks out revenge, and plans to do it on a remote desert highway when mafia boss will travel to Las Vegas in his cadillac. Although short, this is a nice piece of tense thriller with psychological stuff thrown in for good measure. It was really nice to read and feel the main characters rage and anguish in his efforts to avenge his innocent wife. Whether he succeeded or not, read it yourselves!

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This was a short ride, so I decided to stay for a while with Stephen King, so I have read another one, namely Cycle of the Werewolf, upon which was made Silver Bullet, great werewolf themed horror flick. Little town is under siege by the horrible nameless beast. Every full moon the beast comes out and kills people untill it runs into a boy in a wheelchair who manages to guess the real identity of the beast. Who will win in this battle? A boy or the beast? Wow! This one was a great nostalgic return to my childhood years when I was at the same time fascinated and scared by the movie that I mentioned above. The movie follows the book almost to the letter, so if you saw the movie youll know what I am talking, in fact writing about.

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Untill American Gods, Neil Gaiman was practically a mystery to me. I have heard about his works and many of my friends spoke to me about his books, him being one of their favorite writers. So, I decided to read one of his books and it was okay. The epic story about ex con Shadow caught in the war between old and new deities was for me a combination between dark fantasy and road novel, Americana. Since I love heroic sword and sorcery fantasy along with my Star Wars this kind of dark fantasy took some time to work for me. This was an okay novel but for me nothing more. I will of course give Neil Gaiman a chance and read more of his works to get the real picture of him as an author.

 

 

 

Reviews

The movies I have seen:RASEN/PHOENIX FORGOTTEN/IT STAINS THE SANDS RED/THE TEMPLE/

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Hi, people of this page who read my stuff and make it worth writing and keeping the flame burning. This episode of the movies I have seen may start off with j-horror, meaning Japanese horror RASEN. It is a 1998.made movie based on the novel by Koji Suzuki, Japanese Stephen King.

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Doctor pathologist troubled by his past investigates the death of his college friend involving the mysterious video tape. When you watch the tape, in seven days you die. The only solution to avoid death is to make a copy and give it to someone else who must watch it. Sounds familiar folks? Ringu anyone? Well, you are right. Bpth Ringu or The Ring and this one were released simultaneously in the same year throughout the Japanese theatres, but Ringu was a great box office hit and this one flopped. This one was supposed to be a sequel, some of the characters being the same as in Ringu.

Although I love the Asian horror movie scene and especially J-Horror, this one left somehow bitter taste in my mouth. There are just too few spooky scenes and situations in the movie, plus those parts that we Europeans dont understand. Have you noticed that almost every Asian horror has approximately ten minutes of the movie that is understandable only to Asian people? I dont mean to offend anyone here with this connotation, maybe I am just to stupid to get some things or something. The deaths in the movie are too soft, not to mention the ending that is so philosophical and melodramatic that makes you regret you wasted an hour and a half of your life on this one.

Moving on to something different. Time for found footage cross between alien abduction conspiracy and horror. What? Yes, people, time for PHOENIX FORGOTTEN, Ridley Scott produced found footage. It is based on the true stories regarding mysterious lights in the sky in Arizona. The story revolves around young girl who is looking for her older brother who went missing as teenager along with two other kids in the Arizona desert.

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Like it usually happens in those kind of movies, they find a broken camera with the tape inside and the girl watches the found footage that explains and opens more questions regarding the disappearances. I love found footage, it is besides slasher, my favourite horror subgenre, but this one absolutely did not work for me.

The rule in found footage is that absolutely nothing important happens until maybe 40 or 45 minutes into film. Then about half an hour of running around, shouting, impossible to see anything clearly and than the movie usually ends with a camera falling on the ground and remaining there. Blairwitch set the standards and many jumped on the bandwagon of success. The action in this one was just too thin, and I swear that I already saw the ending in one movie, at this moment I just cant remember in which one. Bad movie, but nice to see that the genre still exists today alive and kicking.

When I first saw the trailer for IT STAINS THE SANDS RED it made my mouth water. Finally, I thought, the zombie horror movie worth watching. Reading some of the reviews, some people that I know wrote that the movie sucked. Now I am happy I didnt believe them.

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The movie opens with the scenes from Las Vegas and its a general chaos there. Sirens, fires, smoke, dead bodies…then we are moving to Nevada desert highway, where a stripper and her semi criminal, dealer friend get stuck in the sand with the car tyre.  They see a lone person walking towards them on the road, wearing suit and tie. It is a zombie and it quickly eats the dealer and the rest of the movie is a survival adventure of the girl running and trying to stay alive in the desert chased by that zombie. Although it is an interesting premise the story in the movie is so much more than that. The zombie and his mood is nicely written, the simpathy that the girl gradually has for that zombie which she called Smalls is at the moment touching.

Gore scenes in the movie are nice, some parts made me watch and laugh with disbelief and the ending of the movie left the space for the sequel which I am kinda hoping and kinda not hoping they will make. Zombie horror subgenre became somehow lame for me in the last couple of years, but I just loved this one. It was an incredible fun to see this one and I recommend it with all my heart.

For the last movie in this episode of reviews we return again to Japan. THE TEMPLE trailer and the story looked attractive to me, so I decided to watch it.

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The movie opens with the Japanese police search party roaming through the woods looking for someone. They enter the spooky looking abandoned temple and find a badly burned survivor.

Afterwards, the police interrogates the survivor in the hospital trying to find out what happened. In fact, they are looking for the couple of missing American students, who were last seen traveling in that area. The survivor tells them his story about the group of American students who were making pictures or documentary or whatever involving old Japanese temples.

So, being naive and stupid as most of the characters in horror movies are, they disregard all warnings by the natives and enter the temple which is surrounded by the dark legend that people go mad there, some children went missing and never returned from there bla bla…Anyway, weird shit happens and one by one, the protagonists lose their minds, lives and everything. The movie has some spooky scenes and made goosebumps on some occasions while watching, but generally speaking it was too dark made and some of the scenes were ruined by being too dark to see anything. It also has a twist in the end, but it is one of those horror movie clichees that you have seen and I am certain you will guess it before the movie ends. This could have been much better movie. I wish it were.

Reviews

Some movies I have watched lately!

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There are couple of movies I have seen lately and I would like to write something about them, whether they were good and fun to watch or bad.

First off, THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT 2 was a giant surprise that it came out at all, because I remember the first one not being so good, rather boring stuff, and they made a sequel.

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In this one, the girl that I guess survived the first one and the movie documentary crew travel through America visiting hunted scary attractions and hayrides looking for some which could scare them so two thirds of the movie represent some kind of weird commercial for haunted fair attractions across the USA. The last third of the movie turns into some kind of mindfuck psychological horror or at least it tries to be and in the end leaves you with bitter taste in your mouth not really knowing why or what happened to the characters. This one was a shot in the blank space and it is definitely not worth your time.

Going to the next one, or the next two to be precise. as I watched both JOHN WICK movies back to back. Many call these movies mindless shootout , nothing intellectually worth, but I guess they didnt make them to be mentally challenging, on the contrary, they made them to be action packed fun flicks for no brain pressure release fun watching.

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In the first one, John Wick(Keanu Reeves) is a retired mafia super hitman, whose wife Helen just died of cancer and left him a dog as a last token of her love?! and to have someone with whom he can share his grief. While one day shopping for fuel, the son of Russian mobster sees his Mustang car, decides it must be his, breaks into Johns house, steals the car and murders his dog. Unfortunately for the whole Russian mob organization in town, John Wick decides to move out of retirement and settle the score. This one has a pretty excessive bodycount and attractive action scenes that kept me attracted to the screen for the whole duration of the movie, so I really loved the first movie.

As for the second, tentatively called Chapter Two, the story continues in the same way. Upon hearing that he went out of retirement to settle the score in the first movie, Italian mafia boss burdens John with a hard task, but the one he must do, in order to stay alive and retire out of the previous life once more. Not all goes according to the plan, so once more there is bloodshed and general shootout all through the movie, so it is very similar to the first one, the only difference is that this time it went international in the story, not only in one town like in the first movie.

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In my opinion, the first one was somehow better. I cant really tell why, because in the second one, the bodycount is bigger, the action scenes are even more attractive but it just somehow didnt work for me.

Anyway, I am glad to see Keanu Reeves doing again what he did best in the past and that is making great action movies. I kinda missed him since the Matrix glory days.

 

 

Now is the time for some Asian, to be precise Korean flick. AGE OF SHADOWS is a Korean movie set in 1920-ies when Japan Empire occupied Korea and small band of resistance fighters played cats and mouse game trying to outwit and do some serious damage to the Japanese, who also had Korean collaboration police on their side.

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As it usually goes in those movies, the story is action packed and tense, but what fascinates me the most are the characters. The characters in such movies are so greatly written that they are usually so to say larger than life and you actually feel regret and happines and sympathize with them during the movie. If you expect action blockbuster here, dont watch this one, because, while it has many action scenes, this one is in its core spy drama movie. This movie was great and it only proves how much Korean film industry rose in the scene and somehow became I would dare say leading force in the Asian movie theatre with due respect to Chinese and Japanese movie industry. Anyway, if you are interested and like such movies, see Age of Shadows, you wont regret it!