Midsommar and Florence Pugh give me cultish nightmares

It's been a long time since I had nightmares after watching a film, but it happened last night after I watched 2019's Midsommar. 

Florence Pugh starred in what I recently said was the worst movie I've seen in the past year, and in some ways Don't Worry Darling has some of the same overly suspenseful vibes as Midsommar. But where that one was boring and not profound, this psychological horrorfest is just the opposite.

Pugh stars as a young woman trying to recover from a monumental family tragedy. Her boyfriend, played by Jack Reynor, is a jerk and not much help on her path towards psychological recovery. That is when a friend invites them and four other friends to a Swedish nine-day festival that only happens once every 90 years. That is one of many pieces of the plot that have been nagging on me; how could these people at the festival seem so deeply entwined with their activities if this is something that essentially only happens once in a lifetime? I'm not sure if it's nonsensical or whether that just makes the movie even more eerily compelling.

Midsommar could almost be called something other than a horror movie. There aren't really monsters per se. The scenery is beautiful, usually bright and sunny. But the imagery and rituals along the way and the audience's questions as to why the characters do what they do are deep, puzzling, and often very unsettling.

I love studies of cults and the ways some people take advantage over others who are vulnerable, which the Midsommar cult does with Pugh's character. She ties the movie together and proves why she is a real movie star. Her ending moment is classic and makes you wonder if she has found a way to erase her pain, no matter how awful that path may be. It definitely makes me want to see some of her other recent vehicles, including Oppenheimer, Little Women, and A Good Person.

5 out of 5 stars

Kiernan Shipka is Totally Killer in new Halloween movie

The people who cast the actors for Mad Men all those years ago really knew what they were doing. Exhibit A is Kiernan Shipka, who played Don and Betty’s little girl. She was great as a neglected soul in that TV show and she returns to really hold her own in a new star-making vehicle on Amazon Prime called Totally Killer.

Arriving in time for the Halloween season, the movie is more funny than it is scary, but it still offers a few jumps as a cross between Back to the Future, Scream, and Halloween, even including a reference to the revered Michael Myers.

Shipka plays Jamie, the 17-year-old daughter of a woman (played by Julie Bowen of Modern Family) who survived the 1987 triple murder of her best friends by the Sweet Sixteen Killer, who wears a mask inspired by 1980s stars like Kiefer Sutherland, Rob Lowe, and Dolph Lundgren. 

One of Jamie’s friends creates a machine that Jamie uses to go back in time to - hopefully - change the course of the murders. The plot goes a little off track at times, but it’s funny and entertaining and maybe the plot doesn’t much matter in a tale like this. Totally Killer definitely makes for a solid entry into the October entertainmentplex.

3.5 out of 5 stars

M3GAN mostly succeeds at being creepy and fantastical, with a little horror and suspense sprinkled in

M3GAN, which stands for Model 3 generative android, was probably the top horror movie on my list to watch over the past several months. And while it's an interesting sci-fi tale, with several gory scenes, it's pretty tame in terms of horror. That said, while a little creepy, it's a movie I think most people would enjoy checking out on Amazon Prime.

Here are some interesting things about the production:

1. I was wondering if the doll was an actual actor or CGI. But M3GAN was played by two actors: Amie Donald, who provided the doll's body movements, and Jenna Davis, who provided the doll's voice. 
2. Donald is a 12-year-old professional dancer who represented New Zealand at the Dance World Cup in 2019. This explains some of the wild dance and gymnastic-like moves by the doll.
3. M3GAN continues a nice turn for Girls' actor Allison Williams, known as the daughter of former NBC News anchor Brian Williams and who previously starred in Get Out, another movie that dabbles in horror but leans more towards making a statement on the human condition, in ways very similar to M3GAN actually. 
4. The movie was filmed in Auckland, New Zealand. The producers wanted to go there because of the tax breaks, the government support, the highly qualified film crew in place there, the beautiful scenery, and also becuase the producers admired the country's excellent COVID-19 response.
5. The filmmakers definitely have powerhouse resumes.
1. Director Gerard Johnstone is known for his work on the horror comedies Housebound, which looks like it's worth watching, and What We Do in the Shadows (I thought the TV show was pretty good but haven't seen the movie; incidentally, I's currently watching season 1 of True Blood, which is goofy great, but I may only have the headspace for one form of vampire entertainment at the moment).
2. Producer Jason Blum is the founder of Blumhouse Productions, which is known for producing really good horror movies such as the before-mentioned Get Out and The Babadook.
3. The script was written by James Wan and Ingrid Bisu. Wan is a well-known horror director who has directed movies such as Saw and The Conjuring. Bisu is an actress who has appeared in movies such as The Quiet Place Part II and Malignant.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Stephen King's latest novel captures the zeitgeist of our immigration times

Stephen King's novels often take place in Maine, and could often happen in just about any timeframe.

Some of that could be said for his latest, The Outsider. But it still ends up feeling very much of this time and place. "The outsider" feels like code language for the country's ongoing struggle with what we think immigration means. We as Americans seem to have a very hard time trusting people who aren't quite like us. And King displays how that lack of trust often extends even to the people we think we know intimately well.

Also, the setting is in Oklahoma and Texas (with a little good-old Midwestern Ohio thrown in), places where the immigration debate rages especially strong. Like the epic tale's early protagonist, Terry Maitland, I too studied English and coach baseball. Perhaps that helps me relate especially well.

Maitland is one of Cap City's most loved personalities. But several eyewitnesses catch him kidnapping a young boy who is later found partially eaten and sexually attacked. The townsfolk turn violently against Maitland and his family.

Meanwhile, a second story unfolds through the book's second half, when investigator Holly Gibney comes to town to assist in finding whether Maitland or an imposter who can shape shift into others' faces and bodies is the perpetrator. A group of investigators go on the search to a scary mine shaft in Marysville, Texas, and it's not too much of a spoiler to say some of them won't return.

The Outsider may be the shortest 560-page book I've ever read. That's because it's such a page-turner. Like with many of King's books, this one has so many levels of suspense going on all the time that it becomes painful to have to put down. This is one of several of his books that left me sad that it had to end.

On my list of favorite King books, I put this at #7, right behind Pet Cemetery and in front of Under the Dome.

4.8 out of 5 stars.

It the movie(s) simply can’t compare to the classic book

As readers of this blog know, I’m a huge Stephen King fan. I keep wanting to deny that as I get older and supposedly more mature, but King just keeps being every bit as awesome as ever.

2017’s It has been high on my list of movies to see for many months, but it ends up being a letdown. At 2 hours and 15 minutes, it moves slowly in parts, doesn’t develop enough of the kids’ characters, and suffers from perhaps too many shocks and scares.

That said, it is indeed scary, but it would be scarier if it were less scary all the time.

Granted, pulling off a re-creation of one of the great horror books is not an easy task. It’s a long and detailed book. But with a slew of it neglected, the movie should have just gone ahead and been considerably shorter.

The 1999 TV miniseries suffered from different elements. It was long enough to capture better characterizations, but it was far less scary and fairly cheesy.

I’ll still look forward to the supposed sequel being planned for when the kids are adults and It comes back to the town of Derry, Maine on its usual schedule. But probably the best use of my time would be to simply read the book again.

3 out of 5 stars

How does The Babadook compare to my favorite horror movies of all time?

Many rankings of the best horror films have 2014's The Babadook, which I finally just saw, as one of the best ever. While I don't rank it anywhere near my personal top 10 within the genre, it does feel like there haven't been many scare-fests in recent years that match its levels of psychological thrill.

Its a tale of a woman who lost her husband in a car crash as he drove her to the hospital to have their baby. Seven years later, she takes care of "the boy" (which you don't want to call him) but secretly can't stand him. Lack of sleep, misbehavior at school and on the playground, and social pressures from girlfriends leads to a psychological and murderous mind bend for the mom. And all it takes is a strange child's book character to set off a terrifying, but only mildly bloody, chain of events.

The Babadook doesn't match the horror movies that made the list of my 90 favorite movies of all time, which included:

• Psycho at #1
• Jaws at #3
• Halloween at #40
• A Clockwork Orange at #43
• Friday the 13th at #50
• The Shining at #55
• Silence of the Lambs at #76
• No Country for Old Men at #78
• The Amityville Horror at #84
• Donnie Darko at #85

I think other ones not in my top 90 that might fall in ahead of The Babadook include:

• Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
• Suspiria
• Phantasm II
• 28 Days Later
• The Blair Witch Project
• Poltergeist
• The Exorcist
• "Hillbilly horror classics" Wrong Turn, Hills Have Eyes, and Wolf Creek, and
• The ever-underrated Rob Zombie's terrifying House of 1,000 Corpses and its follow-up The Devil's Rejects.

For more ideas of what to watch, check out the great horror choices on this list.

And next I must see this year's Get Out, which Rotten Tomatoes jaw-droppingly rates as the top horror flick of all time.

The Walking Dead comics are no doubt a rollicking good-time phenomenon

I've been accused occasionally of not having a wide enough spectrum of knowledge about pop culture to be the owner of a pop-culture blog. But you try watching everything on Netflix, Amazon, and HBO, going to the movies, reading all the books on my Kindle list, going to the theater, and listening to all the new music on Spotify with a family and a full-time job.

Ahem. I do what I can. Well, after finally watching The Empire Strikes Back today (yes, it only took me 36 years; I swear I thought I had seen it multiple times already!), I also read book one of The Walking Dead. It captures the first 12 comic books and is a story of cultural significance nearing that of Star Wars.

It does not match Y: The Last Man, which I consider the greatest graphic novel and is also from the apocalyptic genre. The dialogue of Dead can be cliche and lazy and the story is fairly predictable. Or, maybe I've just heard so much about the phenomenon over the years that some of the thrill and suspense has been a bit ... suspended.

Rick stars as a cop who goes into a coma after getting hit in a shootout only to wake up in a world where most humans have been replaced by zombies. He makes his way from the country to Atlanta, where the zombie situation is extra bad. He is helped to a camp outside the city to amazingly reunite with his wife Lori and young son Carl. It's soon revealed that Lori had sex with Rick's ex-partner Shane after they thought Rick had died. This tension boils to a head when little Carl shoots and kills Shane before Shane nearly murders his dad. Turns out, Lori is pregnant, possibly with Shane's baby. Will be interesting to see how that storyline pans out.

The group meets a former NFL player named Tyreese, Carl is shot in the woods, and a man named Hershel helps save him while welcoming the RV-traveling crew to stay on his fenced-in property. This arrangement goes sour after Hershel is forced to re-kill his already-dead three children, who escape from the barn where they had been locked up. The crew leaves and soon finds an abandoned prison, which they are getting prepared to settle as this book comes to a close.

I can't wait to read the rest of the graphic-novel series, but I'm not so smitten that I feel I need to also watch the TV series. Am I wrong?

4.5 out of 5 stars

Stephen King Offers a New "Bazaar of Bad Dreams"

I have a soft spot for Stephen King. Reading his books always take me back to my teen years, when I devoured almost everything he had written up to that point. (See my opinion of his best books.)

His short stories are some of my favorites, so it's exciting to dig into his new The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.

It begins with an old story he conceived at age 19. He wrote it but claims he lost it due to doing too much acid. While recently driving down I-95 in Maine, he remembered the story and rewrote it. "Mile 81" starts with a young kid named Pete who bikes to an abandoned rest area along the interstate. After looking at pictures of nude women hanging on the walls and drinking found vodka, he falls asleep.

What happens within shouting distance during his nap is a horrible chain of events starting with an abandoned, muddy station wagon that lures motorists from the road to the rest stop to help. Bad mistake.

5 out of 5 stars.

Next we have the Raymond Carver-inspired "Premium Harmony." About halfway through, I realized I had read this in, I believe, The New Yorker many months ago. It's a minor story about a middle-aged couple that argues all the time. She doesn't like him smoking and he doesn't like her eating Twinkies. Then everything changes when she goes into a convenience store to get a purple ball for her niece.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

In "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation," no superheroes are involved, Even better: an Alzheimer's patient and a big tattooed Texas roughneck are involved. When a road rage incident gets out-of-hand, the unexpected happens and the police are too late to help. This is a touching story, especially to any grown adults who have had to care for dying parents. And especially if they have done it by regularly taking them from the care facility to Applebee's for lunch.

4.5 out of 5 stars

I was lulled to sleep for a few pages of the short "The Dune," about an old man who paddles out to a small island in Florida frequently. He calls a fellow lawyer to revise his will after seeing disturbing things written in the sand, which he has actually seen in this same spot ever since he was a boy but never told anyone until now. The ending is positively wicked and abruptly makes the story one of Kings's best.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Rounding out the first third of the collection (I'll save the rest for later when my Stephen King withdrawals set in) is probably the best of the batch. Offering a Shawshank-like prison scene and a life-spanning story of one man's battle with a devil who appears in little-boy-with-a-beanie-propeller-hat form, "Bad Little Boy" will almost certainly be opted into a movie or TV show in the future. There are many points that offer spine-tingling chills. And, after all, what more do you want in a King story?

5 out of 5 stars

I'll be back with more about this book later.

More Stephen King Sequels Like Doctor Sleep Would be Welcome

When Stephen King is at his very best (The Stand, Night Shift, IT), there is arguably no better storyteller in the world.

Even when he is not quite at his best, like in his new sequel to The Shining, the storytelling keeps the reader on edge and turning King’s many, many pages rapidly.

Doctor Sleep is the tale of young Danny Torrance, now all grown up but still dealing with the grisly remains of his early life at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado, where dad Jack went bonkers and killed everything he could get his hands on.

Danny still has something called “the shining” in which he can do fantastical things in coordination with other people around the world who also have various degrees of the shining.

I really enjoyed the human-drama aspect of the novel’s first half as Danny tries to overcome the alcoholism that is leading him down a road of blackouts, unsafe sex, and general self-destruction. When he takes a bus to a random town in New England, he begins to better manage his troubles as he meets some friends and works in a hospice where he is given the nickname “Doctor Sleep” because of his powers to help people on their deathbeds cross over to the other side.

Then he starts getting shining visions of a girl named Abra Stone who is in trouble because of her own very-powerful shining powers. This half of the novel is not quite as convincing and the book tails off a bit at the end. However, the concept and some of the character development are interesting. The True Knot is a group of zombie/vampires that appear to others as shlumpy RV travelers, with a powerful and sexy leader named Rose the Hat. She needs to find certain children like Abra to torture in order to get the “steam” her cult needs to literally survive forever.

Doctor Sleep definitely adds luster to King’s long-ago solidified legacy. In fact, it would be great to see more sequels of several of his other early novels that I loved so much as a teenager.

**** out of ***** stars

Mutant Hillbillies Not Weird Enough to Carry The Hills Have Eyes 2

I enjoyed The Hills Have Eyes because I'm a sucker for any horror movie about mutant hillbilly types.

So I decided to dig into 2007's The Hills Have Eyes 2. It's OK, but it's essentially the exact same story, so it loses quite a few style and originality points.

Instead of a family getting lost in the backwoods, this one features a group of mutants living in mines at a military test base and several soldiers seeking answers to a series of mysterious disappearances in the New Mexico hills that look a lot like Pakistan or Afghanistan. I suppose there's something profound intended based on our never-ending series of Mideast wars.

One hint at the low-rent level of this movie is that one of the stars (spoiler alert!) who survives is Jessica Stroup, now relatively famous as Erin Silver from 90210 (an awful show, which I watched for all of its too-many seasons).

This movie is a far cry from Wes Craven's top work (he is credited as a writer) such as his 1977 version of The Hills Have Eyes, Scream, and Swamp Thing.

My biggest beef is that the mutants have no backstory. I would have liked to see a lot more of them.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

Hitchcock is Not Perfect, Which is Not an Easy Thing to Do

 When I was a teen, I not only devoured just about all of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, but I read several biographies about the man himself and became convinced he's the greatest film director of all time.

So it's safe to say I've been waiting a long time for the new movie Hitchcock. His life was ripe with fascinating details and the fact that he is so awesomely funny in a particular British, snooty, yet knowing, way seems to make this an easy home run.

Problem is: the movie doesn't dig very deep into the man's story, so it can't help but be at least a little bit of a letdown for a die-hard like me. Nevertheless, it's difficult not to respect the filmmakers' decision to explore a limited bit of the director's life instead of its epic scope.

I had forgotten that his wife, Alma (played likably and sympathetically by Helen Mirren), was such a big part of his creative force. The focus on the period around Psycho, which I still think is his best film, is also a winning choice. And the explanation of Hitchcock's passion and influence behind the production, the true story of Wisconsin sicko murderer Ed Gein, is interesting.

Anthony Hopkins should be a strong contender for lead actor. My only complaint is that his mouth and eyes make him look more like Hannibal Lecter than the basset-hound like Hitchcock. That said, Hopkins is just plain brilliant.

Two of the most memorable scenes are when he goes the extra directorial step to make Scarlett Johansson look terrified in her shower scene and when he proudly views the audience's faces as they light up with horror on opening night.

That's why the limited interaction between Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, and Vera Miles behind the scenes is a part that the movie leaves a little too under-explored. When those interactions occur, it is spellbinding.

The movie no doubt wins most people over by the end, but a certain un-Hitchcockian mixed bag of suspense makes it difficult to call this movie perfect. And, with my bias, being less than perfect for Hitchcock is not an easy thing to do.

****1/2 out of *****

Does Anyone Really Like Final Destination and Going the Distance?

Somehow I've recently watched a record number of awful flicks. I'll review the last two turkeys I've seen, and then we can all move quickly along with our lives.

I'm assuming 2000's Final Destination is somebody's favorite movie because there have been four ... four!!!??? ... sequels. I don't think that the first installment is in the torture horror-movie genre, but it sure tortured me. There's really nothing redeeming. The characters are played by no-name, C-list actors (except for a pathetically bad Seann William Scott, of American Pie fame), the suspense is non-existent, and there are no scares. In fact, I'm not really sure what this is supposed to be. Is this truly considered part of the horror genre? Whatever happened to the good old days, with Friday the 13th, Halloween, Phantasm II, Jeepers Creepers, and even Drag Me to Hell, to name a few. One reviewer noted that this is something "aimed at the teen dating crowd," so maybe that explains my disconnect from the lame and tame scare tactics going on here.

Next up is something I can't believe I stooped to renting. Even though it looked like a movie I was almost sure I had seen before (I hadn't), I rented Drew Barrymore and Justin Long as long-distance lovers trying to make it work in Going the Distance. How bad could it be with those two cute and adorable lovebirds, not to mention It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie Day and Married ... with Children's Christina Applegate? Well, put it this way: It's no wonder Barrymore and Long's real-life love affair ended. They have zero chemistry, Barrymore looks oddly rough throughout the film, and it's painful watching everyone try to make these jokes work.

With Final Destination, it's a matter of people without talent displaying it for all the world to see. With Going the Distance, it's a matter of people with loads of talent making a huge mistake. Great soundtrack though.

Final Destination
* out of ***** stars

Going the Distance
* out of ***** stars

Phantasm II Adds to Strong Horror Library of 1980s

Deadly silver balls. That creepy mortuary dude. Bad attempts at tough-guy humor from bald men.

Yes, 1979's Phantasm had it all. And I finally got around to - in honor of Friday the 13th - watching Phantasm II.

The horrendous acting and sometimes-slow pace make this arguably painful. But if you loved the first installment, you'll be pretty happy with this one. And, in all honesty, its Evil Dead 2-like stylings help it stack up well against the best movies of an incredible decade of horror flicks. (Released in 1988, with a budget of $3 million, it is supposedly the lowest-budget Universal production of the 1980s.)

Young Mike gets out of the mental ward where he landed at the end of the first film, realizes the "Tall Man" (pictured) and his Jawa-like creatures are still terrorizing his loved ones, and sets out on his personal quest to eradicate the bad guys.

Phantasm II takes a while to get going, but the second half is filled with (if not a discernible plot) wildly creative horror vignettes.

*** out of ***** stars