Phantom of the Theatre (2016) 1h 43m

As soon as I started watching this film I began to spiral down a Wikipedia hole where I kept reading more and more about the types of Chinese ghosts.  I don't know where I got it stuck in my head that jiangshi were the primary ghost type in China.  They're not even ghosts, they're more along the lines of a vampire.  That said, there are some really awesome types of ghosts in their culture based off of their behavior in life.  Actually, both Japan and China have some really cool spirits.  We just get shit like Casper over here, and he's a dildo.

Phantom of the Theatre takes us to an undetermined time period in China.  An abandoned theatre is full of the spirits of a murdered acrobat troop which can kill by causing a person to burn from the inside out.  When a man approaches an up and coming actress to star in the film he wrote, she accepts once he decides to film it in the old theatre.  The pasts of both characters hold many secrets which rise to the surface during the filming and premier of their movie.

I don't know why I feel stunned by this, but it has been a while where I watched a film where the plot was so coherently addressed and wrapped up.  There were no loose ends, everything made sense, and the ending left me wanting.  Why is this something that is so hard to achieve in horror?   The sets and costumes were beautiful.  The visual and CG effects were acceptable although there tends to be some borderline Mortal Kombat skulls flying around (also a brief character named Liu Kang didn't help).

Twinsies!

I think my favorite part of this film was the actual Phantom.  He looked like some sort of Chinese King Diamond.  Look at him over there.  He looks like he's going to break out some sweet Merciful Fate covers or talk to you about his interest in black magick.  If Phantom of the Theatre was just this guy killing everyone then I would've given this film the highest rating ever!  Instead...

I give Phantom of the Theatre 4 Kennywood Phantom Fright Night logos out of 5:

Bleed (2016) 1h 22m

You know that part in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy and those Nazis get to the grail room and they have to chose the Holy Grail?  The lady Nazi hands the one guy a cup and he says "it certainly is the cup of the King of Kings" and then fills it and drinks from it?  You remember that?  He fucking died super hard from that because he had chosen... poorly.  That's kind of how I feel with today's film.  I rolled a movie that I had already watched.  When that happens I try to go with the film before or after it then.  Upon reading that this was a bunch of people ghost hunting in a burned down prison I figured it would be good enough.  That's only a tiny bit of the plot and I felt this movie age me.  Not to dust, but enough that I'm not sure if my penis will ever work again...

Bleed focuses on a couple that just bought a house in southern fuck-all USA.  Our female protagonist has a strange crescent moon birthmark on her neck and is also eight or nine months pregnant.  These two things are related as the movie progresses.  Friends come to visit the couple and the woman's Burning Man burnout brother and his girlfriend convince almost everyone to go to a supposedly Satanic burned down prison to ghost hunt.  The ghost of Rob Zombie past appears, a bunch of pointless backstory and unnecessary character development happens, and the towns folk are a cult that want the baby for reasons never really defined.

This movie would've done well as a short film.  All killer, no filler, and we'd be just fine.  Unfortunately we have a rag tag cult with a religion thrown together based on no research other than "ummm... blood... babies... satan but not satan... Rob Zombie."  We get two thirds of the way through and a girl suddenly discloses that she was schizophrenic since she was a child and that's why she keeps taking pills.  This reveal has nothing to do with anything!  Ever!  Even the fact it's a prison is kind of worthless as it's just used as a building where Rob Zombie in Rasputin form could be chained up.  They could've used a spooky old shack for that.  It was just a dart board full of ideas and whatever they hit they tried to fit in and make it work.

On the plus side though, the acting was decent.  The accents were a bit thick on some of the locals but otherwise not too bad.  Camera work and sound were all good.  The score used a lot of cool instrumentation where I could tell it was metal bowls with water in them or doing slides on a violin or cello string.  I'm not knocking things like Carpenter's Halloween score here, but I would like horror to work more on atmosphere like that rather than traditional music.  Overall though, I think Bleed bled out, leaving a husk of a film on the floor.

I give Bleed 1 copy of Alice Cooper's Only Women Bleed out of 5: