The Maus (2017) 1h 30m

War is a horror unto itself.  The entire concept seems so foreign to a lot of us because we never served in the military and the last real war or battle fought on U.S. soil was the Civil War (with the exception of maybe Pearl Harbor).  Yet there are countries that are at war or face some form of occupation currently and their daily lives are horror, or have been horror.  PTSD, a lack of people able to trust individuals, or just the existence of misanthropy and entropy when it comes to life... it's a horror that we hope to never see.

The Maus takes us to post-war Bosnia (although this film is from Spain).  A woman and her German boyfriend returned to the country because the bodies of her parents were finally found in a mass grave and she wanted to give them a proper burial.  While en route to their flight the SUV ends up in a mine crater and unable to continue.  Two Serbs come up behind our couple while they walk on the path to get help.  Ignoring the warning the Serbs are yelling about danger ahead, the couple's dog sets off a land mine and the woman is caught in the blast.  This is where we get our first dream sequence which may be more of a premonition of dangers to come.

There's a supernatural horror element in The Maus that becomes the focus for a short time.  It's mostly used as a deus ex machina but I wish it didn't exist at all.  There is a much more visceral horror present here with the constant questioning of trust and safety, prejudice existing from growing up in a war torn area, and the dream sequences which create these incredibly uncomfortable feelings within the viewer. I think that this film makes those moments much more frightening than a supernatural being ever could.

I do have to nitpick a few things, just because they bugged me and killed my immersion in the film.  First, when the couple is walking they come across a jeep and the boyfriend finds a walkie talkie in the bag, all the while completely ignoring the gigantic CB antenna on the top of the jeep!  Use that to call for help you dolt!  Second, when we finally see the demon it looks like Gray Fox from Metal Gear Solid, just in earth tones.  It's not a bad design, but it made me more hyped for Metal Gear at that moment than this film.

All in all The Maus isn't bad, but I don't feel like it falls under horror.  Yes, I've spent most of this talking about real life physical and personal psychological horror but if I had to classify it in horror I'd say it's a dramatic horror film.  That feels awkward to say though as drama and horror don't tend to overlap but this isn't a thriller.  The real villain here is just humanity being opportunistic and shitty.

I give The Maus 3 MGS Gray Foxes out of 5:

Veronica (2017) 1h 45m

A few years back I used to work at a witchcraft store here in New Orleans.  People had no problem picking up statues of Goetic demons or objects meant to curse, but the moment they saw a spirit board/Ouija board they refused to touch it.  It's amazing how fearful people have become of press board with a decal on it and a plastic planchette.  I mention this because today's film is loosely based on a woman named Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro that supposedly ran afoul of a spirit board and it lead to her death.  To this day it's Spain's only officially documented police record with a focus on supernatural and the unexplained.  You can find all that info online so I won't go into it.  What I will go into is our review!!

Veronica is a Spanish film where our title character and her two friends attempt to hold a seance during an eclipse with hopes of contacting passed loved ones.  They make contact with something but in the process it seems that the spirit has latched itself to Veronica.  She and her siblings become threatened by the spirit, shadow people roam the house, and strange stains begin to appear on under their beds.  Not even the blind nun nicknamed Sister Death can help Veronica as she is told her only hope is to be able to outrun the entity surrounding her.

I've noticed that the more horror films I watch for this website, the more grizzled I become.  My skin is much thicker than it was say 10 years ago.  With that in mind, I think the younger version of myself would've been way more into this movie than I was.  There are some really decent visual effects involving hands coming out of the bed and grabbing people and shadows moving inside of the apartment.  I liked the overall story telling, it's supernatural gonzo-fiction but that's what makes it a movie and not a documentary.  My only complaint (once again) is this weird mix of magickal practices contained inside of the literature that accompanies the board.  I know, it's not meant to be some sort of "official" anything and is just this weird hodgepodge of info, but I'm pushing a pair of glasses up the bridge of my nose and scoffing like a douche at it.

I give Veronica 2.5 haunted paintings out of 5:

Sweet Home (2015) 1h 20m

I don't know how, but there has been an obvious trope in both horror films and video games that I've been overlooking until now.  It may already have a name, but for this blog I'm going to refer to it as the Boss Fight trope.  Basically the viewer/player is given a standard bad guy.  You see them as being the primary evil that the protagonist(s) have to overcome.  Suddenly a much larger bad guy is revealed and his introduction is spent quickly destroying the already established bad guys just to show how fucking evil this one really is.  There are no loyalties except to chaos or destruction brought by itself... and now you're fucked!

That's too good of a set up for what Sweet Home really is.  It's a home invasion movie where it isn't even the protagonists' home. They're in a mostly abandoned building where they thought it would be okay to celebrate one of their birthdays there.  We're given a quick introduction of text explaining that in Spain, real estate progress causes people to leave their home by choice, force, or a more sinister third option.  It's murder.  I'm spoiling that for you right now.  I wish it was something like demonic possession but it's literally just murder.

Our protagonist couple get stuck in this building when three people come to murder an old man that's holding out.  The couple take two of the three out and trap the third.  This is when we get introduced to the Boss Fight and their "back-up" comes and cuts up the third guy while he's trapped.  Then he freezes the bodies with liquid nitrogen and crushes them with a hammer.  Finally he sweeps them into garbage bags.  Shit is pro.  It's so pro that it's created its own tier, it's godlike.  The rest of the film is the couple trying to survive and escape.

This film really wasn't that great.  The major bad guy was interesting in how methodical his work was.  It was precise and emotionless.  He's just shy of being considered a "slasher" because, in the end, he was still just human.  Everything else here was just flat.  Stare out as the highway goes into the horizon flat...

I give Sweet Home 1 gingerbread house out of 5:

Day 26: Bloody April Fools (Los Inocentes) (2013) 1h 5m

The issue you sometimes face with a film from another country is that some things will get lost in translation.  For example, Los Inocentes translates to "the innocents," not Bloody April Fools.  What also doesn't translate well is that while the North American "fool's day" happens to be April 1st, Spain's (which is where this film is from) takes place on December 28th.  So this leads to my big "what the fuck" moment of why is the U.S. release of this film called this?

Bloody April Fools starts off as any good slasher would: the quiet nerdy boy is accidentally murdered during a prank by some jock assholes at a hostel.  On the anniversary of his death (Fool's Day/December 28th) people at this hostel would end up murdered.  The hostel is then closed and said to be cursed.  Enter our group of late teen/early 20-somethings that are lost and decide to stay at the abandoned hostel despite some warnings from the locals.  Much blood and death ensue as well as some Jean-Ralphio looking asshole playing dumb pranks until his death.

Overall, Bloody April Fools did nothing new or original.  While I was having a bit of issue figuring out who the killer was, by the end of the film I realized they were just placing the original Friday the 13th in a hostel instead of a summer camp.  The actors were all on point but their characters were the standard tropes (minus a token) and, even the ones we are supposed to cheer for, I couldn't be bothered to give a fuck about.  The ending makes sense for the Spanish title at least.  I'm still kind of pissed this movie is called Bloody April Fools here.  Also, as another point of griping, I'm pretty sure that nail gun needed to be hooked up to a compressor and is not just a "I'm going to walk around with this shit and shoot 10" nails" type.

I give Bloody April Fools (Los Inocentes) 0 pictures of people enjoying a hostel responsibly out of 5:

Day 14: Para Elisa (2012) 1h 15m

Have you ever heard the Patton Oswalt bit about his TiVO?  I feel that way with some of the movies Netflix puts in their horror listing when I'm counting to the number I rolled.  It seems that since I enjoyed some of the foreign horror films I've watched on this blog that Netflix has the idea that I must like all foreign horror.  "But you like the horsee shows! NO TiVO! BAD TiVO!"  Bad Netflix!

Para Elisa comes to us from Spain and revolves around a spoiled shit of a college girl whose mom won't lend her 1000 Euros for a trip with her friends because the mother had just paid for her to take a trip to London.  Her drug dealer boyfriend sees a poster for a babysitting job, calls the number, and hands her the phone.  She eventually goes to find out that the girl she is supposed to baby sit is a grown ass woman that the mother has completely fucked up in the head.  After being drugged, our leading lady wakes up to realize that she is not meant to babysit, but to become a living doll for the daughter to play house with.

This movie wasn't for a horror fan.  This is more for the vanilla movie watcher that wanted to watch something scary.  Yes, the premise is kind of fucked up and the mother/daughter relationship is bizarre but it really didn't keep me invested in the film.  In addition, a leading character that I instantly did not like (as obvious above) really gave me no one to root for.  Plus, you see the ending coming way to early.  I know that's a constant complaint I bring up on here, but I want to be surprised.  Just once.

I give Para Elisa 1 creepy doll out of 5:

Day 23: Kidnapped (Secuestrados) (2010) 1h 25m

I feel as though something were translated poorly as the Spanish (as in from Spain) film Kidnapped didn't actually have a kidnapping happen in it.  There's a weird beginning scene that doesn't tie into the rest of the film, and that guy may have been kidnapped, but as for the rest of it there was no kidnapping.

Kidnapped is actually a home invasion film with a group of rich people I couldn't be arsed to care about and a weird trio of criminals.  There's the all business criminal, the criminal that is looking out for the family, and the hyper-violent criminal.  They're all still dicks, but like I said, so is the family.  I initially thought that the family was chosen because the father could have been involved in some sort of shady business, but it seems that they were just chosen because they were loaded.  Most of the film is either the daughter and the wife in the house while the hyper-violent and the compassionate criminals watch them, or the all business and the father driving around while the bank accounts get emptied at ATMs.

IMDB says that this film was apparently done in 12 long shots without cuts.  I could see that.  It would explain why it was so damn boring too.  You can pull of interesting long shots as a director, but this film had no real direction with it.  The script must have been "rich family moves in house, people break into house, draw this shit out as long as possible, kill everyone."

I give Kidnapped 1 Spider-man ski mask out of 5: