The Houses October Built (2014) 1h 31m

That poster looks like it's from one of those hidden object game pack CD-Roms you find at Wal-Mart for $10.  I know about these because my obsession with Paranormal State caused me to track down their game on one of those... and something like five Wal-Marts in a 30-mile radius.  DON'T JUDGE ME!  Instead, judge this "found footage" film, because that shit has been done to fucking death.

The Houses October Built crew consists of some 20-somethings that get the idea that they want to go on a road-trip to find an "extreme" haunted house.  This road trip is only six days and they pretty much stay in Texas until they catch wind of a place known as "Blue Skeleton."  Think of it as the speakeasy of haunted houses where you have to get a weird invite in a creepy way and then go somewhere to meet someone.  Along their voyage they stop at a few different actual haunted houses and, usually the guy with the beard, ends up doing something asshole-ish and pissing off the workers.

They get followed and creeped on by all kind of crazy haunted house workers until they are picked up by the skeleton crew.  Then they're buried alive after being fucked with in some creepy house in the swamp/woods.  Whatever.  Fuck 'em.

I had actually seen parts of this film before because my husband (P.S.  I got married before this cut started) watched it and I was probably sitting on my laptop while he did that.  It didn't keep my interest much then and this time it started okay before my interest waned again.  I also, for the life of me, don't know where in the hell they found an alley off Bourbon St.  I saw there were doors so I assume it was a private drive-way or something.  Seriously, the Quarter is dolphin's butthole tight with their blocks.

I give The Houses October Built 1 supposedly real haunted house out of 5:

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Deathgasm (2015) 1h 26m

Can I just give this a 5 right now?  Seriously, this hit on all my favorite things as far as a horror-comedy.  It's fucking called Deathgasm for Lucifer's sake!

Take one part Evil Dead 2, one part John Dies at the End, and throw in every heavy metal album cover ever and you have Deathgasm.  After finding out there's an old metal musician in hiding in their town, Brodie and Zakk end up with a copy of "The Black Hymn."  Their shitty metal band (named Deathgasm) play the song and suddenly the town becomes possessed.

I haven't laughed out loud (on purpose) at a good horror-comedy in a while and this one had me rolling on the couch.  It's such a great combination of juvenile humor mixed with metal references, corpse paint, cheesy blood and gore, and even a Sub-Zero fatality at one point.  Also boobs... what's a metal movie without boobs?  Have you even seen Heavy Metal?

Fucking 5 pictures of Gaahl out of 5!!!!:

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Friday's Choice Cuts: Hisako (from Killer Instinct) figure (Ultimate Source)

I have a lot of toys that are related to horror and/or video games.  A majority of which sit around and look cool.  This Hisako figure sits around and looks badass!

I haven't even played the new Killer Instinct game (as I don't have an Xbone or a computer that could run KI) but as soon as Hisako was announced I was all in on her.  The character moves in that jerky/shaky J-horror style while bending her body in impossible ways and even distending her mouth and elongating her teeth to razor sharp points.  Hisako is known as an "onryō,"  a Japanese spirit that has been pulled back from purgatory in order to extract revenge upon the living.  She fights using her father's naginata.

The sculpting on this figure is fantastic.  It's not so much an action figure though so you can't have cool battles with, say, the Tyrant from the Resident Evil toy line of the 90's, but the pose is awesome.  She comes with two naginatas (one with a ribbon as seen above and one that has tiny orange skulls) as well as a replaceable head so if you want to switch to the razor teeth and elongated jaw.

As I said, I haven't played the game so I didn't buy this as a diehard KI fan.  I bought this more because of my love of J-horror and I haven't regretted it to this day.  And at some point I will be able to play KI and I will pretty much only play as her.  Hisako, you're so dreamy!! <3 <3 <3

The Host (2006) 2h

I like horror.  I like comedies.  I like horror-comedies.  Sometimes though you can tilt in one direction too much, or teeter-totter between extremes and it takes away from a film.  At the same time, this shit was two hours long so I guess if that's what they were shooting for then they really needed to pad it.

The Host has a simple plot, but there's a lot kind of going on so bare with me on this.  Set in South Korea, the movie focuses on a family consisting of a father in his 60's, two sons (one of which has a daughter), and a daughter that is apparently some sort of archery Olympian (or hot shit archery person, I don't know).  The father, one son, and the son's daughter all live in some snack stand by the river that the father runs.

Back in 2000 some buttlord of a mortician tells his assistant to pour a ton of chemicals down the drain because the bottles got dusty.  These chemicals get in the river and create some kind of amphibious monster that looks like a mix between a lantern fish, a lizard, and a Vaporeon (from Pokémon) mixed with the rad jaws of the Predator race.  So now, in 2006, this monster appears and wrecks the river side and supposedly eats the daughter.  Later the son gets a late night call from his daughter saying she's trapped in a sewer and this sets off the family on an escape from quarantine to find the child.

This could have been shorter, and it could've done with a lot less of the goofier shit in the beginning, but all in all this was an okay film.  The monster looked good, except for one scene where I think they rendered the monster in one program and flames in another program, and those two things were put together and were making a nasty baby.  The acting was good but the characters I didn't really care about.  So middle of the road.  Middle of the South Korean road...

I give The Host 2.5 Vaporeons out of 5 (so you don't have to look it up if you don't know):

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Resurrección (Resurrection) (2015) 1h 42m

Argentina... where the hell did you come from with this film?  Damn!  Resurrection (or, it's original title, Resurrección, which I'm not typing over and over because of ASCII laziness) was not what I was expecting to get into but I'm glad I did.

Resurrection revolves around a priest in the 1800's that is traveling to Buenos Aires to help victims of a plague.  His journey passes by his brother's home and he visits, only to find the wife has locked herself and her daughter in the chapel and the brother is sick with the plague.  After kicking a weird healer out of the home, the priest becomes infected while giving his brother his last rites.  From there we don't know what is real, a dream, or supernatural in regards to the daughter begging to escape as the others want to kill her.

I'm a sucker for religious imagery and Resurrection has that in spades.  There exists the obvious such as stigmata wounds, or crucifixion poses, but it goes much deeper than that.  There tends to be a lot based around the "father," in the literal sense.  Fathers and grandfathers are brought up a few times and their actions and consequences of doing what's good for the family.  There is also the sense of god giving man free will and standing back while the devil tempts them.  Faith becomes a common thread too as it is tested in relation to faith in god, man, science, etc.  Finally, my favorite done here is a moment reminiscent of "Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me..." the night prior to Christ's crucifixion.

Damn catholic upbringing...

The film looks great, the subtitles are actually good, and there's a scene with a woman that gets set on fire and then shot that was cool.  She was trying to kill the priest so it's not as if she's some innocent person.  Also, chickens don't give a fuck about any plague.  They are the fucking supermen of this film as they will just random be downstairs doing chicken stuff.  Bring on Resurrection 2: The Cluckening of Christ!

I give Resurrection 4 Holy Chicken images (by pjusis on DeviantArt) out of 5:

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The Hallow (2015) 1h 37m

When the opening production credits have four production companies, one co-production company, and one "in association with" listed, I begin to question the credibility of the film I'm about to watch.  In this case though, it seems that this meeting of the Euros worked out in this movie's favor.

The Hallow is an Irish film that brought together a bit of science with a lot of folklore and made it work well.  We have our typical family of Adam, Clare, baby Finn, and a dog which I could never understand what Adam was calling it.  Iggy?  Digby?  Biggy?  (credit spoilers: it's Iggy... which wasn't even the dog's real name so that explains why it didn't listen to him, ever.)  Adam is surveying a patch of forest for a lumber company when he comes across some strange mold on a dead horse in an abandoned house.  That is about as dumb as that sentence sounds.

The neighbor man keeps coming around saying he and Adam need to talk and that the forest belongs to the Hallow.  His daughter was apparently taken by them.  This is pretty much the set-up for this film.  They bring in classic folk practices like using iron to keep evil/spirits away, there's the introduction of kidnapping a baby and replacing them with a changeling, and they even go as far as to add a vampire-based element with light, especially sunlight, harming the creatures or those infected.

As with any film I enjoyed I'm not going to spoil it on here.  I will say that a good part of this film felt a bit middle-of-the-road for a while but the last section really turned it around for me.  There's a flaming scythe, some good CGI and practical make-up/effects, a rad beheading, and a section of stop-motion that looks like it should be from a Tool video from the mid-90's.

I give The Hallow a solid 3.5 copies of Irish folk tales out of 5:

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Bhoothnath (2008) 2h 30m

Oh man.  Netflix is just punishing me for some reason.  I don't know why my rating of a "thumbs up" to one Indian film has now cursed me for an eternity of shit ones.  Look at that poster.  Fucking look at it!  This was in the horror section and also under its heading was "movies ages 8-10."

Fuck you so hard Netflix!

Bhoothnath revolves around a haunted house where a child and his mother stay while the father is out being a captain or something on a cruise ship.  Stupid shit happens and the kid sucks.  The ghost is an old turd and there's some homeless vagrant that is some sort of "oh... that scamp," character.  There was a musical/dance number with elementary school kids in the style of Beat It but only they were dressed in rap video thug clothes with bling and shit.  One has a fake afro wig!

I made it about half way through this movie to where a musical number was going to kick in about the kid and the ghost being some sort of bros and I fucking turned it off.  In the entirety of this blog, something like 120-ish movies, this is the first one I ended up going "Nawww dog... fuck this shit," and turning it off.

Fucking ages 8-10 movie in the horror section, suck on my left nut while the right one sweats in your fucking eye Netflix.  Also, fuck your shit subtitles.  When someone says, in English, "this place is so cool," and you put on the screen "this place is so nice," mmmmmmmmmmmm.... you mother fucker.  So much rage and anger...

This was trash, so instead of a rating it gets this .gif of Murderface because if this movie had a face I would murder it!

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