ICYMI: Our Stranger Things Season 1 Review

"The worst thing about this show is that it was over way too quick."

(aka John Carpenter's E.T.)
Release Date: July 15th.
Country: USA.
Rating: NR.
Written by: Matt and Ross Duffer.
Directed by: Matt and Ross Duffer.
Starring: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Matthew Modine, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, and Charlie Heaton.

Stranger Things is a love letter to the 80's. We grew up in the 80's, so the Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions, the infectious pop music, the rotary phones, and TV antennas felt like a snapshot of our past to us.

In a way, we were the kids in this show. We were way cooler (obviously), but we played D&D, rode our bikes all over the place, and were totally afraid to talk to girls. Alright, fine. Maybe we were awkward too, but we're cool now. We think.

Even though we're going to keep things as vague as possible, mild spoilers do follow.

Hawkins, Indiana, 1983: After a particularly harrowing all-day session of Dungeons & Dragons in which Demogorgon lays waste to the entire party when one of the players rolls a shitty 7 (all you needed was a 13!), four middle school friends call it a night and part ways. One of them, Will, never makes it home.

"HAVE FUN NOT MAKING IT HOME."

Will's mother, Joyce, is frantic the next morning when she realizes her kid never made it home, and heads off to report him missing to the local Chief of Police, Hopper. He, along with everyone else, thinks that Joyce is crazy, because she kind of is, and so they aren't sure whether to believe her or not.

I WONDER IF SHE HAS CALL-WAITING?

Will's friends are worried, and since no one else is making any progress finding him, they decide to take matters into their own hands, and search the woods for him. What they find instead is a little girl in a hospital gown with a shaved head, and a penchant for remaining silent, named Eleven.

And that's all we're saying.

YEAH, THINGS GET STRANGE.

From the get-go, Stranger Things did not feel perfect to us. The story felt all too safe and familiar; the acting was cheesy at times (calm down, Winona!); and even the cast felt odd at first, as most of the kids weren't your cookie-cutter, good-looking Disney types (which was a really good thing, btw); but man did it ever pull us into its world and keep us engaged through its entire 8 Episode run.

Stranger Things is a show that is deeply rooted in the 80's, and not just because it takes place then; it feels like E.T. and The Goonies meets The Monster Squad, with a bit of old-school John Carpenter flair thrown in to make it darker. It also had obvious nods to Alien, and it reminded us of Silent Hill more than once, so really, it's a bunch of things thrown into one big, 80's-centric pot that made us nostalgia in a big way.

Had "Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter Presents" popped up during the opening credits, it wouldn't have shocked us at all.

US, CIRCA 1983.

As nostalgic and comfy as the word of Stranger Things feels, there's a steady stream of darkness and danger that runs through it, which makes it much more than some kid-friendly throwback. The monster is real (and creepy as hell); Eleven is dangerous, and we're never sure just who she's going to take her anger out on; and the proverbial "men in black" are a real threat who kill indiscriminately to cover their tracks and get back what is theirs.

It's all very dire, and as sweet as it can be, it's all very serious.

It was also over far too quick, and it left us hanging on a few plot points that have us really hoping that Netflix gives it a Season 2. Seriously, the waffles!

IS THAT A OUIJA BOARD PAINTED ON THE WALL?

Violence aplenty in this one, but the gore factor is low.

WINONA WENT DARK IN THIS ONE...

There's a bit of sex, but nothing gratuitous at all.

THE PANGS OF FIRST LOVE ARE APLENTY THOUGH.

One of the coolest things about Stranger Things is how it uses 80's music to accent its story. It's like an awesome mix-tape. Our faves were:

Should I Stay or Should I Go (The Clash)
Africa (TOTO)
I Melt With You (Modern English)
Waiting For a Girl Like You (Foreigner)
Sunglasses at Night (Corey Hart)

*GOONIES THEME SONG INTENSIFIES*

Sentimental, intense, nostalgic and creepy, Stranger Things took us by total surprise. It's one of the best things that we've seen all Summer, and we can't wait to see the story continue in Season 2. There's going to be a Season 2, right?

If you have Netflix, stream this bad boy asap.

A

Stranger Things is streaming on Netflix now.

From the I we saw her in Lucas, Winona Ryder was one of my biggest crushes as a kid. She's still beautiful today.

Shudder Review: Among the Living (2014)

"So the directors of Inside decided to make themselves their own version of Stand By Me, huh?"

Released in France way back in 2014, and in many other parts of the world since then, Among the Living is finally available to U.S. audiences, thanks to the superb streaming service, Shudder.

The filmmaking duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury burst onto the Horror scene in 2007 with the superb Home Invasion Thriller, Inside (review HERE). It took them four years to deliver a follow-up film, Livide (review HERE), and yet another three years to arrive at Among the Living.

They're also the duo responsible for this year's Leatherface, which we reviewed a few days back, right HERE.

While nothing they've made since Inside comes close the the twisted perfection of that film, they sure do know how to make movies that offer gorgeous visuals and graphically disturbing bloodshed.

On Halloween night, a deranged pregnant woman tries to kill her asshole husband and mongoloid son Klarence, only to turn the knife on herself to escape her shitty existence as a French housewife. Father and son then take off to "start a new family" somewhere else.

YOU DROVE HER TO THIS!

Some years later, on the last day of school, three teenage friends decide to skip class and have some fun. After trying their best to burn an old man's barn down, the trio of Dan, Tom and Victor head for the ruins of an abandoned film studio where they find a bound and gagged woman in the trunk of a car. A man in a clown mask spots them and gives chase, but they elude him, and escape. They tell the Police their wild story only to be laughed at, because the kids are assholes who are always causing trouble and lying.

THEY KIND OF HAVE IT COMING.

Later that night, the hairless freak known as Klarence seeks each of the boys out, with the intent to kill them so that they can't tell the Police about what he and his father's new home, and the fact that they kidnap girls and force them to join their new family. Of course the no one believes the kids anyway, so really, killing them could have been avoided altogether.

Creepiness and blooshed ensue.

NOTHING CREEPY ABOUT THAT.

Among the Living had the feel of a Spielberg movie from the 80's, and I'm pretty sure that was by design. Some people have called it Stand By Me meets Slasher flick, and while I get that, I have to say that the kids in this movie aren't likable enough to draw that sort of comparison. I mean, they plot to burn down a guy's barn, and one of them almost kills his sleeping dad with an axe, so they're hardly on the same tier of lovable that the kids who starred in movies like The Goonies, Super 8, or even Stranger Things, which Among the Living definitely tries its best to vibe off of.

Seeing that the film spends a lot of time developing the kid characters, and showcasing their school-skipping adventures, you'd think that you'd want them to come off as less asshole-ish than they do.

The film gets better marks for its intensity when the kids are evading the masked creeper at the film studio, and even higher ones for ratcheting up that intensity in the 3rd act of the movie, where said creeper comes after the boys, intent on killing them all. Kudos to Maury & Bustillo for taking the film where they did; I figured it would be about the kids being trapped at the movie studio, trying to survive while being chased around, but it was kind of ingenious to turn it into a hunt-and-kill type of thing where the killer comes after them later on, in their own homes.

There are definitely parts of the movie that are unnerving, and downright scary. Klarence makes for a terrifying movie monster, and the part in the bedroom gave us chills. Uneven it might be, but it delivers on the scares. It was cool to see Maury & Bustillo regulars Beatrice Dalle and Chloe Coulloud show up in this one too.

DAT ASS.

There's gore frigging galore in this one, including, but not limited to: pregnant belly stabs, foot-in-mouth violence; a nasty cast break; a face being shorn off; and all sorts of other bloody and brutal bits throughout. The long, drawn out kill scene in the house towards the end was all kinds of disturbing.

It's odd though, that with such a bloody beginning and finale, that they don't show the kills in the middle of the movie...

GORE GALORE.

We get to see Klarence in all of his fully nude glory, and the gorgeous Chloe Coulloud sheds her top in death.

AU REVOIR, MON AMI.

While we wish that the movie had been stronger and more cohesive overall, we have to give credit to Maury & Bustillo for crafting a gorgeous, scary, and overtly-bloody film in general. It's not quite Inside, but it's still an above average effort.

Give it a watch if you're a fan of the films of the French new extremity.

C+

Among the Living is streaming now on Shudder.

Chloe Coulloud is tres magnifique.

Theatrical Review: IT (2017)

"The best Horror movie 2017 has given us so far."

(aka The Loser's Club.)
Release Date: September 8th.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga.
Directed by: Anthony Muschietti.
Starring: Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Jack Dylan Grazer, Chosen Jacobs, Wyatt Oleff, and Bill Skarsgard.

There have been some great movies this year, but as we approach the 4th quarter of 2017, none of them has made us feel like the remake of IT did.

In direct contrast to the 1990 mini-series, it's not even Pennywise that made this remake so great, but the story of the kids. IT definitely has a Stranger Things vibe about it, but watching The Loser's Club run around Derry, Maine brought to mind movies like The Goonies or The Monster Squad, probably because we're old, and those movies came way before the hit Netflix show did.

Point is, it reminded us of a time when our friends were all we had, and we stuck together through whatever came our way.

It might sound crazy, but this new take on the world of IT is so captivating that I really wish that they would have gone the TV route with it. Season 1 could have been 8 episodes of the kid's story, and Season 2 could have switched gears to the adults, and finished things off.

As it stands though, the IT remake is a great piece of work that made us wish we were kids again... just not in Derry, where a killer clown from the nth dimension would be trying to eat us.

On a rainy day in 1988, stuttering Bill Denbrough makes a paper boat for his little brother Georgie, so that he can go outside and sail it in the gutters. The boat washes into a storm drain that is occupied by a clown who introduces himself as Pennywise the Dancing Clown before biting the kid's arm off, and dragging him into the sewers.

JUST LET THE BOAT GO, GEORGIE.

9 months later, and the list of missing kids is growing. While Bill and his friends, The Loser's Club, spend their days being terrorized by the sadistic Henry Bowers and his gang of thugs, they all start having horrific run-ins with a clown, who tries to kill each of them in ways suited to their worst fears. Mainly because Pennywise feeds on fear.

AND HE ALSO INSPIRES FEAR QUITE WELL.

When they finally realize that Pennywise is a very real threat and has been eating children every 27 years for centuries, they band together to put an end to him once and for all.

INTO THE GLORY HOLE OF DOOM THEY GO.

IT is the kind of Horror movie that we desperately need. Not only is it scary as hell, but the coming-of-age story that anchors most of the movie is genuinely heartfelt, and it sucked us in and made us want to be a part of The Loser's Club. As scary as it is, and it is scary, it's filled with plenty of humor and humanity, and it captures the perils of being an outcast child fantastically.

The casting of the kids is just about perfect. Watching Sophia Lillis as Beverly, I said to myself "This girl is going to win an Oscar someday." Sounds crazy, but the girl displays the type of nuance that separates good actors from the great, and she played the part as if she'd been born to do so. It was an absolute star-making turn. The rest of the kids were great too, with Finn Wolfhard's Richie being our fave; the kid made us laugh, and he brought some much needed levity to the dark proceedings.

As for Bill Skarsgard's take on Pennywise... Look, say what you will about the 1990 mini-series, but Tim Curry was brilliant as Pennywise, and his performance will stand as one of the Horror greats forever. So what can we really expect from someone else trying to follow that kind of lead, you know? Skarsgard makes for a terrifying clown, and he gives the film plenty of menace, but it just wasn't as good as Curry's turn. And it didn't have to be.

• The Lego turtle was a nice nod.
• As was the doll of Tim Curry's Pennywise.
• The bathroom scene was a huge improvement over the one from the mini-series, and it was one of the best bits in the movie.
• The rock fight rocked.

THIS GIRL STOLE THE SHOW.

As with any remake, or adaptation of a novel, there are going to be changes. Here, they made Georgie go missing instead of his body being found early on; the way that Bev makes it into the sewers at the end is different, and not as good; what exactly was Henry Bower's fate? Who will take the rap for the child murders? It was a bummer that Patrick Hockstetter's creepy story wasn't delved into a bit more too. And what about The Wolfman? The giant bird? The Paul Bunyan statue that comes to life? And why did they change Mike's character so much? And a bolt gun instead of the slingshot?

They obviously made these changes to appeal to the modern audience, and make things scarier. These are minor gripes, as we get that not everything from the book could possibly make the movie, but we miss certain elements.

THE HOUSE ON NIEBOLT STREET.

IT ended, and we wanted more. Also, production on the 2nd part of IT (which is not a sequel, but the back-half of the story) hasn't even begun production yet!

GIVE US MORE!

The bathroom scene with Beverly is literally soaked in blood, and it is glorious.

THOSE TAMPONS SURE ARE GOING TO COME IN HANDY NOW.

Not that kind of movie at all.

INSTEAD, IT'S THIS KIND OF MOVIE.

The bottom line is this: IT is a great remake, a great film in its own right, and it should be seen by all. It has a special, nostalgic quality about it, it's terrifying (at least for those who fear clowns), and for us, it more than lived up to its massive pre-release hype.

Read the book, watch the original mini-series, and then see this in theaters.

A+

IT is in theaters now.

Some shots of Pennywise, because who doesn't need a few more nightmares in their life?