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?

VOD Review: Vampyres (2016) #31daysofhorror

"This is a very naked remake."

*SUBMITTED BY: Artsploitation Films, who sent us a handy screener.

Female Vampires are a sexy and terrifying thing to behold. They're usually gorgeous and scantily-clad, which is great and all, but knowing that they're only using their feminine wiles to lure unsuspecting men like us to some dark place so that they can drain them of their lifeblood is just terrifying. As a man, let me tell you that we're just not strong enough to resist that kind of thing. We're simple creatures.

In the 70's, there were all kinds of vampire flicks that featured sexy female vampires. They all had that spooky, 70's Gothic vibe about them, and some of them even pushed the boundaries of good taste by offering gratuitous nudity, sex, and lesbianism. Back then, that was some scandalous shit.

One of the most famous of those exploitational vampire flicks was Vampyres (1974), which featured the stunningly gorgeous Anulka as one of the Devil's whores, and maybe even offered more graphic lesbianism on film than any other movie ever had before.

Now, it's been remade. We're not sure exactly why, but it has.

Vampire lovers Fran and Miriam live in an old house in the woods where they have sex with each other, and lure unsuspecting travelers back home so that they can drink their blood. Maybe even bathe in it. When a group of dimwit campers decide to set up their tents nearby, they get pulled into the erotic and blood-soaked world of the two sapphic vampires, which doesn't end well for most of them.

I'm not trying to be vague or anything here, that's really all there is to the plot. This isn't a very deep movie.

THAT'S THE LOOK OF LOVE.

This remake of Vampyres isn't a great movie. The acting is uneven across the board, which has a lot to do with most of the movie's stars speaking English when it's not their native language, which is always distracting to me; the story, while being rather faithful to the 1974 version, drags on with a lot of exposition that did nothing for the movie; and although the movie boasts plenty of attractive ladies, none of them had that special "it factor" that Anulka did in the original. Anulka was special.

But...

This remake does boast plenty of nakedness, lesbianism, sex, and a liberal amount of bloodshed that makes it a fun watch, at least on a visceral level.

"I... I LOVE YOU?"

The vampire ladies feed on plenty of victims throughout this one, and it gets messy. There's even a scene where the two vampiresses have some lesbian sex in a bathtub, while blood pours down on them from above, courtesy of a slit throat. Felt a lot like that scene from Hostel 2...

THEY SURE ARE HUNGRY. AND HORNY.

I'm pretty sure that this movie exists only to showcase a bunch of naked girls kissing each other. We can respect that.

BLOODY HOT.

If you're in the mood for a movie with an exploitational level of blood and gore (and let's face it, sometimes we're all in that mood), then Vampyres will probably give you your money's worth.Just turn off the part of your brain that craves substance, and you'll be fine.

C

Vampyres will hit VOD and DVD on October 18th.

The lovely ladies of Vampyres.

TV Review: The Exorcist, Pilot Episode

"FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED."

SUBMITTED BY: An Anonymous commenter who seemed to really like the first episode.

It's not like remakes are new or anything, but lately it seems as if they're remaking everything. Movies are one thing, but when it comes to TV shows, creators at least have a chance to stretch their wings and give the stories that they're "re-telling" room to breathe.

When we heard that FOX was making The Exorcist into a TV show, we had the same reaction that we always do when it comes to remakes: "Of course they're remaking it, why wouldn't they?" Add to that the fact that The Exorcist is an excellent and highly-nuanced movie that no one has come close to duplicating over the past 40+ years since its release, and it sounded even worse.

We just knew that they'd make it safe and glossy, and fill it with plenty of diversity and whatever else the Twitter voices of the moment were demanding. Diversity is a wonderful thing, but I truly had visions of them saying "Let's remake The Exorcist, only with a woman exorcist this time!" simply because that's what people "want."

Well, we watched episode 1 of The Exorcist, and were really pleasantly surprised at how great it turned out. It's nothing close to the movie, mind you, but it did its own thing pretty well, and we're excited to see more.

Father Tomas is a priest who has himself a small Parrish in Chicago. He's an up-and-comer in the priest world (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) and he loves his work. He's also plagued by terrifying dreams of another priest, Father Keane, performing an exorcism on a little boy in Mexico.

Then we have Angela, head of the Rance family. Her husband is in the beginning stages of dementia, and the eldest of her two daughters (Kat and Angela), is a handful herself; Kat is moody and troubled ever since being in a car accident that claimed the life of her best friend. Of course this leads Angela to believe that something spooky is going on in the house (?!?), and so she goes to Father Tomas for help.

To avoid spoiling the episode, let's just say that from here on out Father Tomas goes to see Kat to determine whether or not she's got a Demon inside of her, and then is driven to seek out Father Keane to help him with the possessed Rance daughter. 

DON'T GO UP THERE.

The first episode of The Exorcist was far better than we thought it would be. I was fully expecting to turn off the TV in disgust and not have any desire whatsoever to come back for Episode 2, but And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee did enough right to keep me interested.

I daresay it was even a good hour of TV.

There was an underlying tone of impending supernatural doom throughout the episode that played well; the scene in the attic was creepy, and the twist unexpected; the exorcism scenes, even though they were dreams/forced flashbacks, were done really well; and the cast all did a solid job with their roles. Their characters were all a bit cookie-cutter, and some of them came off as predictably stiff, but the actors made them likable. Geena Davis and Ben Daniels were the standouts.

That's not to say that the episode didn't have its issues. They crammed an awful lot of backstory into 43-minutes, which made some of it feel rushed. The back and forth between the two priest's worlds never really allowed us to get to know either of them enough to really care about their plight. Same goes for the Rance family; we get that they have it rough, but they kinda felt like caricatures to me. Also, I really hope that they don't rely on cheap jump-scares going forward. The show is solid enough to get by without that kind of crap.

The first episode did a great job of setting an eerie tone though, and we're definitely interested to see where the story goes from here.

THE ATTIC. THAT'S WHERE THE STORY IS GOING.

FOX has a chance to do something really special with this TV series. We're not expecting it to push boundaries like Hannibal did, but if the first episode is any indication, they aren't exactly going to play it safe like the big networks tend to do with their hour-long dramas either. Let's just hope that going forward, FOX takes the time to let the story unfold naturally, let the characters grow, and cut out the damn jump-scares.

We liked the first episode, and if you have yet to see it, you should give it a look.

B-

The Exorcist airs Friday nights at 9, on FOX.

Both of these girls are possessed... by beauty.