Tag: october 2019

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Film TV

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2019

As I did last year, I decided to do another horror marathon during the month of October, to put me in a proper Halloween mood. This year’s list of what I watched (see below) is a bit shorter than last year (20 vs. 27), but I think this year I ended up watching more TV series, which took up more time — and I ended up watching the second half (all made up of movies) during the final week of October. (I’m also watching more pro wrestling these days, so I imagine that affected things too.) So here then is the list of TV shows and movies I watched for this year’s marathon, and I can’t wait to do the next one — you’ll also find all my write-ups under the “October 2019” category.

  1. American Horror Story: 1984
  2. Annabelle
  3. Annabelle Comes Home
  4. Annabelle: Creation
  5. Ash vs Evil Dead (Season 3)
  6. Assassination Nation
  7. Costume Quest
  8. Creepshow (2019)
  9. In the Tall Grass
  10. Les affamés (Ravenous)
  11. Marianne
  12. Midsommar
  13. One Cut of the Dead
  14. Overlord
  15. Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead 2
  16. The Conjuring
  17. The Conjuring 2
  18. The Dead Zone
  19. The Purge (Season 2)
  20. Twilight Zone (2019)
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Debaser Film

The Conjuring 2

And so the final thing I watched during this year’s horror marathon (20th on the list) is The Conjuring 2. I watched it on Halloween night, in a double bill with The Dead Zone. As I’ve written in previous posts, I’ve been enjoying watching all of the Conjuring franchise films, and this made for another fun watching experience. I prefer the first Conjuring film, but this was pretty good too, and the London setting made for a nice change of pace. Even though this marks the end of my horror marathon for this year, I do plan on watching the other two Conjuring spinoff films, The Nun and The Curse of La Llorona, soon.

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Debaser Film

The Dead Zone

On Halloween night I decided that I would go with classics for my final movies of this entire month of horror, and first up on the agenda was The Dead Zone (I next was planning on watching the original Carrie, but ended up watching The Conjuring 2 instead). This is still quite a good movie, with great direction by Cronenberg (one of his very early films), and a nicely odd (but not too odd) performance by Christopher Walken. The best part of the movie is the final sequence, and having not seen this movie in decades, I’d forgotten the details of it so I got to enjoy it yet again. It has even made me want to check out the Dead Zone TV series that was produced in the 2000s, starring Anthony Michael Hall.

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Debaser Film

The Conjuring

So after watching all three of the Annabelle movies, I decided that I would next go and watch the two proper Conjuring movies. The Conjuring is the only movie of this entire franchise that I had already seen, but that was when it initially came out (2013), and so I found myself not remembering much as I was watching it. Also, after watching all those Annabelle movies, it made me appreciate a lot of things I was seeing even more, like the mentions of Annabelle (which I know actually came first, but still, it was fun to see). And the film itself is quite spooky and creepy, and I like that it takes itself fairly seriously — as I’ve mentioned in my posts for the Annabelle movies, it reminds me of those classics from the 70s like Omen and The Exorcist.

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Debaser Film

Annabelle Comes Home

So after watching Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation earlier in the day, I capped it off with the third film (that had come out earlier this year). I really did have a lot of fun watching this one as well, maybe even more than the other ones. I like the fact that it takes place almost entirely in the home of the Warrens (from the Conjuring movies), as well as the connection to those characters — much more than we get in the two other Annabelle films. Overall, I’ve had a blast watching this series, and wouldn’t mind seeing another one (that centres around Annabelle), although at this point I don’t really see where they could go with it, but I’d love for them to try.

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Debaser Film

Annabelle

So after watching Annabelle: Creation (the prequel), I watched the first Annabelle proper. I quite liked this, maybe more than Creation, and thought it made for a nice take on the “creepy doll” genre — especially the idea that it acts as a conduit for evil, and isn’t just possessed. The other thing I quite like from these movies is that they’re all period movies, which makes for a nice change from a lot of the horror movies I watch — and I think it reminds me a bit of the classic thrillers and horror films of the 70s (Omen, The Exorcist, etc.) After watching this, I was quite looking forward to watching the third film.

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Debaser Film

Annabelle: Creation

I’d been meaning to check out what is now The Conjuring franchise for quite a while now — I’d seen Conjuring when it originally came out, and liked it fine, but for some reason hadn’t gotten around to watching the sequel or all the spinoffs. Although Creation is the second Annabelle film, it’s a prequel, and so since it was the only Annabelle film on Netflix, I decided to start with this one. Overall, I liked it — it didn’t blow me away, but it’s creepy enough and I had fun watching it, enough to want to watch the other movies (which I ended up doing on the same day). I was a bit confused by what I saw at the end, but found it pretty interesting when I later found out that it was presenting what we see in the first movie of the series, but from a slightly different angle (I looked it up on Wikipedia, before watching the first movie proper).

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Debaser Film

One Cut of the Dead

I’ll start by saying that this has got to be the best (well, my favorite) movie I’ve watched this year. As I mentioned in my post about Les affamés, I’m pretty sick of the zombie genre, but still decided to watch this because I had heard that it was great — but I avoided spoilers, and so didn’t know what made it great. I feel like explaining why I enjoyed it so much will maybe ruin the experience for someone coming in to watch it, so I prefer not to say anything except that this is for people who enjoy the horror genre, as well as the filmmaking aspect of the movie business — and yes, this is a comedy, and during the final half hour I found myself laughing uncontrollably. I can’t recommend this enough.

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Debaser Film

Les affamés (Ravenous)

I was looking through Netflix’s horror movie category for things to watch, and came up on this, a French-Canadian zombie flick that was apparently critically acclaimed (it’s under the English title Ravenous, and was released in 2017). Even though I’m pretty sick of the zombie genre in general, I decided to watch it — thinking that having Quebec as a setting would be interesting. I will say that technically, I think this is well made film, in terms of filmmaking. My biggest disappointment though was that the aspect of the film that was presented that seemed really interesting and novel (the zombies create these tall structures and gaze at them) is never explained — we don’t even get a tiny suggestion of what it might mean. What you’re left with is just a few people surviving a zombie apocalypse, like we’ve seen countless times before (and especially in the Walking Dead). I wouldn’t say it’s a bad film, but it missed the mark for me.

Categories
Debaser TV

Creepshow (2019)

This is a new series that’s currently airing on Shudder, and it really does feel like a proper follow-up to the original movies. It really embraces the comic book aesthetic as well — all framing sequences are done in that style, including some bits during episodes — and it just feels fun to watch. Sure, it’s a bit on the low budget side — something you mostly notice when it comes to creature effects — but I think it suits the campy vibe of the series. I’ve watched the first two episodes (which are themselves divided in 2 half-hour episodes), and liked pretty much all of them — the one with the dollhouse was especially great. Well worth taking in of you were a fan of the original movies, or enjoy fun campy horror.