October 16th: WEREWOLVES WITHIN - a mumblecore comedy about a group of disparate characters trapped in a remote location slowly turning upon each other, one of whom may be a werewolf - if werewolves exist, that is. It's not bad, maybe a little too pleased with itself here and there and some of the acting choices are... choices that were made, but I enjoyed it. I had never heard of this thing but apparently it's the highest critically-rated movie based on a videogame ever made - even more critically-lauded than the first Mortal Kombat movie - and made a billion dollars at the box office in 2021 so I'm just late to the party again.
October 17th: LOCKWOOD & CO - I binged Joe Cornish's adaptation of... a YA book series? Or one-off novel or something? I dunno. It was pretty enjoyable, but it's a Netflix original so I will assume it's already been cancelled and say that I certainly enjoyed it while it lasted, it had a good run, etc. The series is set in an alternate reality where ghosts are real and young people can see them and so are pressed into service with corporate ghostbusters, blah blah blah - it's just Rentaghost with extra steps, really. There's no point harping on about old wine in a new bottle in this day and age where everything has to be based on something from other media or a remake, this is a well-made show with some decent characters and it commendably commits to its world and premise. Not the worst way I could have wasted a day in bed.
October 18th: WORLD'S END - oh dear God I'm late to the party again by 13 years, and this was already a film about the main cast getting old and looking it. Stars the detestable landlord Eddie Marsan, who has latterly made a career of making people on Twitter hate his guts for his shitty political takes and - oh yeah, his hanging about with confirmed antisemite Mel Gibson, so hating this tosser was my only strong genuine emotional feeling about this film. I was confused about some of the messaging, like "if Nick and the wife are doing good why is he sitting around a hobo fire talking to homeless people at the end?" and "is Gary going backwards or not, because he's hanging out with robot doubles of his old school mates, but he's also teetotal now, so what's the takeaway here?" I think I left it too late to watch this, as it might have hit home when I was more lost in the weeds of Pegg/Frost/Wright fandom, whereas watching it far removed from even the memory of Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz, I'm not feeling it at all. It's certainly well-made, and some of the bar fights are amusing, but it feels like it maybe needed another pass at the script to add some more jokes and maybe tie a bow on the motivations of the aliens.
October 19th: BAD MOON is a werewolf movie where the dog is the hero and we view events from his perspective. Sweet Jesus - WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED THIS EXISTS?
Everyone in this film is an utter dumbass, except perhaps the werewolf when he expressly says "listen to that dog, Janet, he's just trying to protect you", but nobody listens to the dog, who is framed for a crime and comes to the rescue of those who betrayed him anyway - what a mensch! When Janet Didntcatchername's sketchy brother gets in touch and it turns out he's living in an area that has seen a spate of grisly killings that started around the time he moved into the area, and then he moves his caravan next to her house because of the curfew that stops him going out at night anymore IN THE AREA WHERE THE GRISLY MURDERS HAPPENED, and then a con artist is torn to pieces on the road outside her house in a manner similar to the killings where the brother used to live, AND he has loads of photographs of his ex-girlfriend's torn-to-pieces corpse laying about while insisting she's alive and well in Seattle, Janet naturally assumes her dog did one or more of the killings and has him taken to the pound to be destroyed - at which point I declared "well the Heck with this stupid disloyal bitch" and I only watched the rest of the film in the hope of seeing her dumb head get torn off. Clearly the film got me emotionally invested, and I really enjoyed it in all its thick-eared mid-90s po-faced seriousness. The werewolf is an impressive practical effect and if it had been shot a bit better I could have seen it being terrifying, but all the night shots in this are brightly lit to the point they may as well be broad daylight, and the camera lingers just a little too long on the werewolf model and dispels a lot of the potential terror it might induce - as a Husky parent, it's natural for me to find something that looks like a wolf completely adorable, but I'm pretty sure the film should not be instilling the feeling in me to adopt one of these murder cannibals - the axiom doesn't go "There are no bad werewolves."
A solid werewolf flick that doesn't even pretend to be any kind of mystery, it even opens with a werewolf attack on the male lead, just in case there is ever even the tiniest sliver of doubt in your brain who the werewolf is, he even sits down and watches a werewolf movie at one point with a kid and explains how you can kill werewolves, which definately exist because he encountered one. I loved this stupid movie.
October 20th: SHROOMS - putting Americans in the lead roles of your low-budget domestically-produced movies has long been seen as a means of improving something's overseas box office potential, but in recent years, with the influx of Chinese money to Western movies and those Chinese producers insisting they get some "bankable" Chinese stars on the cast (who can forget the star turns of "that one lady in that Kong movie" or "that lady in the background in some shots of that Godzilla film"?) so that they can sell the movie in their native China, it's led to the rather embarrassing sight of those movies failing miserably in China as its domestic audience not only stays away from these films, but actively derides them on social media as patronising and embarrassing. I don't know if this is in any way relevant to Shrooms, but a lengthy intro helps hide that I have nothing of substance to say about this film, which has a premise that if I describe it to you, will probably have you guessing the twist ending pretty quickly, so spoiler warning for Shrooms I guess: Shrooms is the story of some American kids who visit Ireland and take some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and then they start being killed off one by one every time the female lead blacks out, a condition that afflicts her because she took a particularly potent type of mushroom which has been known to make people black out and do murders. She also sees the murders happening as they happen so I dunno what to tell you, it feels like when you have a twist this telegraphed, you're kind of wasting the audience's time the longer you hold off showing it. I didn't really like the movie, is what I am saying.
October 21st: CRY OF THE BANSHEE - did someone copyright the word "werewolf" circa 1970? Because this is quite clearly a werewolf film.
Vincint Price hamming it up as a cackling witch-hunting bastard in panto robes does not automatically mean the movie is good, but I think we can all agree that it always helps. Vincent Price, a werewolf banshee - I think you already know I enjoyed this garish slice of period melodrama, but it's not one of his best.
October 22nd: HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET is a teen slasher, only without much slashing. Yeah, so basically I couldn't be bothered getting up from my seat and it was the first thing that came up on the Netflix ticker, soooooo...
It passed the time, I guess. There doesn't seem to be any indication of the better things Jennifer Lawrence would go on to do, a lot of the dialogue is clunky and embarrassing, and this really seems like something that should have sank without trace, so I'm guessing Lawrence's stardom gave it a boost it really doesn't deserve.
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