Y’all know by now that periodically I like to check in with my fellow spoopy lovers and talk about the scary movies and spoopy things I’ve watched lately. And most recently, I’ve actually probably watched more horror TV shows than horror movies, and some (not all) of them have been pretty good.
And at this point in a blog post where I’m about to segue into the books/movies/shows I’m about to review, I always think of that Family Guy episode where Peter thinks the expression is “without further dudes” instead of “without further ado” and I kind of giggle to myself about how that was a wildly underrated joke and I wish more people knew about it.
So, without further dudes…
Child’s Play (2019)
So some of you might know I’m an OG Chucky fan. I absolutely adore that creepy little shit. Dolls are so creepy, and Chucky is hilarious and trying to murder entire families, and the whole thing just cracks me up and he’s my absolute favorite. He ranks second only to muh boy Jason V. in terms of classic horror villains. So of course, I went into the remake with the same attitude I go into a lot of remakes with: thinking it was going to suck and there was no way it would live up to the original.
And I was only half right.
Obviously the movie will never live up to the original—that’s just how a lot of remakes are. (With a few exceptions, such as the It remake which I actually think is worlds better than the one from the 80s, but that’s a whole different fish to fry.) But this movie actually didn’t suck, in my opinion. The new Child’s Play—which is a remake/reimagining, rather than continuation of the existing franchise like every other Chucky movie—brings Chucky into the modern era by making him more of an AI type doll, enabled with Alexa-type capabilities where he can link up to all your electronics and be controlled with voice-activated demands. He is part of a line called “Buddi”, but it just so happens that this Buddi doll has no filters or firewalls and the ability to go totally rogue.
The Chucky movies really have the added benefit of not taking themselves too seriously, which I think is one of the big reasons the remake didn’t suck. They know their audience and they know their marks and hit those marks very well. Where you miss the mark is when you come in with entries in the Chucky saga that are supposed to be taken more seriously or try to employ that darker tone (like Cult of Chucky, for example, which I didn’t hate, but which definitely took itself much more seriously than earlier entries). The new 2019 Child’s Play doesn’t take itself very seriously and goes straight for what it is—a cheesy, funny horror movie about an ugly murderous doll.
This remake also gets some points for starring April Ludgate Aubrey Plaza, everyone’s favorite queen of RBF.
Also starring this kid as Andy, who I legitimately looked up to see if he was Ansel Elgort’s little brother because he’s practically a little doppelganger.
I definitely miss Brad Dourif’s voice as Chucky, because it’s just the voice I will always associate with Chucky no matter what, but Mark Hamill does a good job. (And no, I wasn’t just picturing Luke Skywalker the entire time, like I have seen some people complaining about.) The only thing is, the new edition of Chucky is hella ugly. And I know what you’re thinking—but Samantha, the old Chucky was one of the ugliest things ever. Yeah, but he was so ugly that he actually came full circle and became cute again. (Though I admit, I think he’s even better once we hit Bride of Chucky—my favorite film in the series—and he gets his stitches/scars on his face.) But the new Chucky is so smoothed out and redesigned that he is just downright uglyyyy. This is truly a face only a mother could love.
But overall, it’s a fun movie, it has some good actors, some gruesome scenes, and a lot of laugh out loud moments. I do think they did proper justice to Chucky and while it will never replace the OG Chucky movies, I’d still recommend checking it out!
Child’s Play is available for purchase on Amazon Prime, Vudu, or at Redbox for just $1.80! (Though I remember when Redbox movies were only a dollar…grumble, grumble, something about “back in my day…”)
Channel Zero: Dream Door
So apparently this is the last season of Channel Zero as the whole series was cancelled, which I think is an absolute travesty. This show is what horror anthology TV shows should be. We absolutely devoured the first three seasons and the only reason it took me this long to watch season four is because it wasn’t on Amazon Prime or Shudder for free like the other three and I’m cheap so I was waiting for the price to come down.
Each season of this show is actually based on a well-known creepypasta or r/nosleep story, which again, how did this get cancelled? The first season was based on one of my favorite creepypastas, Candle Cove, and featured a certain character, who is also on the promo poster for that season who may or may not have traumatized me for life. (He’s also on the homepage of Shudder, and every time I open up their site I instantly regret it as I practically cringe out of my own freaking skin).
Okay, I’m about to put a picture of the character in question below, so…get ready.
UGGGGGH. YES. THOSE ARE TEETH. IT IS MADE ENTIRELY OF TEETH. I can’t even.
Arguably the best season is season three, Search and Rescue, based on the popular reddit story of the same name about mysterious staircases in the woods.
But I digress.
Season four is called Dream Door, based on the story The Hidden Door, and at its core, is about a married couple with a boatload of secrets between them who find—well, a hidden door. In their basement. But the ramifications of opening that door are where it gets really creepy.
This season features a character called Pretzel Jack, who is a contortionist clown who’s gone pretty much off the rails and is murdering people left and right. But it’s not even his murderous impulses that make him so creepy, it’s just—him. Just the design of this character and his contortions and everything about him. He is so creepy.
Pretzel Jack turns out to be a character who has been literally dreamed into life by one of this season’s MCs (and I think that concept is dope) and when she discovers she has this ability—and that there may be others like her—things spiral really out of control. But all the secrets that the husband and wife in this season have really amplify all the creepiness and complications, so they have to overcome both supernatural threats and emotional issues.
I’ll be honest, this season probably isn’t as good as the first three, and can’t hold a candle to Search and Rescue (I bet you thought I was going to say a candle to Candle Cove, right?), but I still liked it. Parts of it didn’t impress me much, but the more subtle moments were where it really stood out, in my opinion. The dream abilities, the creepiness of Pretzel Jack contorting himself and creeping around, the quiet horror of realizing that the person you married might not be who you thought they were—these are the things that I really liked. But then there were these more over the top moments, like these loud kind of old school slasher “EEE EEE EEE” noises when Pretzel Jack stabbed someone, or ridiculous dreamed up monsters, or people cutting villains in half with reciprocating saws. And these moments were so ridiculous and detracted so much from the point of the show and I wish they had just done without. The quieter scares were just so good that the rest of it was unnecessary.
Johnathan, for the record, didn’t like this season. He really liked the others, and is also of the opinion that Search and Rescue was the best one, but he didn’t like this one much more. He said he didn’t really like the slasher/killer aspect of it and likes the more cosmic horror approach that the other seasons took.
Perhaps this is why it won’t be back for a fifth season, and it’s really a shame, because as a series, it’s wonderful, unique, original, and as far as I’m concerned, it really deserves another chance. After all, American Horror Story has been churning out stinkers ever since Hotel, and they keep getting renewed.
I’m just going to add a quick line here that I’ve legitimately been trying to watch AHS: 1984 and I am just not impressed. I keep waiting, because there has to be some twist or something original, or some way they are going to subvert these tropes coming up soon, right? I realize this might be confusing because I absolutely love 80’s slasher movies, and this season is based on 80’s slasher movies, but there’s a line between doing something original and doing what this season is doing, which has so far just been scene for scene copying some of the most famous 80’s slashers with barely any originality whatsoever. What’s the catch here???? It has to get better, right??? I don’t know, I’m still waiting. I guess we will talk more about that when the season ends.
Channel Zero: Dream Door is available on Amazon or Shudder.
The Haunting of Hill House
A lot of people had been asking if I had watched The Haunting of Hill House yet because I love spooky things, I love spooky shows, and I love the book by Shirley Jackson. And a for a long time the answer to that had been no, but we finally caved and watched it, and I really did enjoy it. There were some moments in this series that were legitimately spooky as all hell. But what I really liked about it was that it wasn’t only spooky. It was a combination of creepy and haunting things mixed with heartfelt and emotional as we follow the family’s struggles and the way that they relate to each other and go through their own individual issues.
Visually, I adored it. I just loved how everything had that kind of dark bluish-gray tint to it, similar to how Marianne looked. It added to the dreary, almost hopeless feel of it, especially when there would be contrasting scenes that were bright and full of color and happiness, and then we would revert to the darker side and more grayish imagery.
I will say that it’s almost nothing like the book The Haunting of Hill House, and felt less like an adaptation and more like they were just taking themes and some of the characters from the book and going in their own direction with them—which is fine if done well, which I think the show was. It definitely fits the bill of “modern reimagining”, which it was billed as, rather than “book adaptation”, which some definitely thought it would be.
I liked that they used some of the lines from the book and overlaid them into the show as narration, because Jackson is a beautiful writer, and you really miss out on that aspect when watching it as a TV show. The only thing I didn’t like about that was that they attributed some of those lines to the character Steven, as if they were from his book that he wrote, because I kind of thought his character was a total blowhard and I was a little insulted that they would attribute such beautiful writing by Shirley Jackson to this kind of overgrown frat boy character who, in some scenes, seems to be unable to tell his ass from a hole in the ground. But I guess that’s a bit nitpicky.
The other characters were great, though. Theo and Luke were probably my favorites, and you have to love Theo for her smartass comments. (My favorite being when they’re at Nell’s funeral and Shirl’s husband keeps asking everyone who comes in if they’d like something to eat or drink and telling them how much food they have, and Theo quips, “This is Kevin’s coping mechanism, he turns into a waiter.” It was so funny and relatable and helped bring a little light to a very dark situation.)
I think the child actors in this did a phenomenal job when we were flashing back to the scenes when they were all kids. McKenna Grace delivers in practically everything she’s in, but all the kids did a great job, and the kid playing child Luke was absolutely precious.
And, perhaps most importantly, I think they did a really excellent job of bringing the house to life as an additional character, which I think is what any portrayal or reimagining of Hill House is deserving of.
Overall, I liked this a lot. I enjoyed the vibes and the story and I thought it was very dynamic. I’ll probably check out season two next year, and you haven’t watched this and you love spooky stuff, check it out. But also, read the book! The book is amazing and while you can totally watch the show without having read the book at all, you’re just downright missing out if you haven’t read the book since it’s so good.
The Haunting of Hill House is available on Netflix.
In the Tall Grass
In the Tall Grass just premiered last weekend and is based on the novella of the same title by father-son duo Stephen King and Joe Hill about a brother and sister pair who are on a cross country trip. When they stop alongside a field of—you guessed it, fam—tall grass so that the sister, who is roughly six months pregnant, can barf, they hear a child yelling for help from inside the grass and enter the field to try to help him. Once in there, they quickly realize they too, are lost inside the grass, and it doesn’t seem to exist or operate like a regular field does.
I read the novella on Kindle last year, because for some reason it’s strangely difficult to get ahold of a physical copy. I don’t know why, but I was only able to get it on Kindle. Maybe because it was apparently originally written for a magazine, so they didn’t bind it and make any physical copies available for purchase? I imagine now that the movie has come out, there will be physical copies of it available, except they’ll have the imagery from the movie on the cover and it will be ruined by that giant round sticker loudly proclaiming NOW A NETFLIX MOVIE.
But I digress.
I read the novella and it was pretty good and there were some honestly disturbing and kind of gnarly moments, so when I heard it was being adapted for a movie on Netflix, I was excited to see how it would go. I will openly admit, I did not think they would adapt certain parts of it for a visual format. I just did not think they were going to go there.
But they did.
I was actually surprisingly impressed with this film. The imagery was pleasing to the eye and disconcerting at the same time. As soon as I watched the tall stalks of grass close behind the first character we saw enter the field, my anxiety was already up. Even without the more supernatural aspects of this film, just the concept of getting lost in a field like that and having no idea where to turn or even look and just losing your bearings entirely is scary, and something that really does happen to people.
A lot of the images in this movie are amazing and some of the best parts, especially some of the really creative overhead shots of the grass and its movement. They did a great job of bringing the grass very much to life, which, similar to the house being a character in Hill House, is exactly what this Tall Grass adaptation needed. The actors all did a great job, and while a lot of people were most excited for big name star Patrick Wilson’s role in this, I actually thought some of the smaller, lesser-known actors such as the brother-sister duo and the lost little boy were the standouts.
While the film is different from the book, the filmmakers added to the book rather than detracting from it, which is what we see happening most often. Rather than removing the good parts, they added other elements and characters that could illustrate the story more effectively in their eyes. For once, I wasn’t annoyed by the additions, but actually liked them, and I really appreciated that they included what were, in my opinion, the best aspects of the novella (which is all I can say without MAJOR spoilers). I know there are some people out there who didn’t like this movie or though it was “boring”, but I enjoyed it and thought it was a good watch. Sure, it’s not an over the top crazy slasher or poltergeist or poltergeist turned slasher flick, but it’s still interesting and weird.
In the Tall Grass is now available to view on Netflix!
So what spoopy things has everyone else watched lately? Anything good? Do you have thoughts on any of the things I’ve watched? Let me know in the comments! As always, I’d love to hear from you. <3