Movies
Rob Savage returns without another screen-based horror film. It's quite a step up from Host, which ended up being a bit boring and too suggestive. In Dashcam, he makes he turns things around and delivers a manic, constantly thrilling and over-the-top horror flick that should put you on the edge of your seat. If you can stomach found footage that is. A young American right-wing artist rebels against COVID measures and travels to the UK to meet up with an old friend. He's not what she remembered him to be, and they end up fighting. She steals his car and picks up an old woman, who she promises to drop off for a big chunk of money. The lead character is absolutely dreadful, but that is clearly by design. The intro is a tad slow too and some of the footage is probably a bit too fuzzy. Once the horror starts though, it doesn't let up and the complete lack of lore adds greatly to the intrigue. I had a lot of fun with this one.Read all
Another King-based horror film. That means you're getting classic (80s-like) horror, familiar tropes, and few surprises, but director Rob Savage handles everything gracefully. The Boogeyman isn't out to revolutionize the genre, instead, it's doing its best to do right to clichés that turned cheap over the years. Will is a therapist whose wife died just a month ago. One day a man visits him, telling him about a dark creature that killed his kids. Will calls the police, fearing the man might be violent. While he does so, his latest patient hangs himself. Soon after, Will's daughters start seeing the creature in their home. The performances are solid, the boogeyman looks neat and the scares are properly executed. I don't really care for little kids fighting off age-old evil, but putting that aside, I had a lot of fun with The Boogeyman. Savage is proving himself a talented horror director, though I like to see him tackle projects that aren't quite as restrictive.Read all
A somewhat surprising hype, not in the least because Host is hardly the first in its genre. The computer-screen horrors have been around for a while now (the Unfriended films probably being the most eye-catching examples), and Host doesn't really innovate or even try to do anything new with it. A Zoom meeting during the COVID-19 pandemic, with five girls and a dude preparing to do a seance. Their little gathering goes horrible wrong and before they know it an evil spirit is haunting their homes. One by one the participants of the meeting disappear, leaving the others fearing for their lives. Performances are rather weak and the hauntings feel like a cut & paste job from better films. Some chairs move, things appear on camera that aren't there in the real world and thumping noises are coming from the attic. It's a simple but relatively effective setup, sadly the build-up is flawed and the execution subpar. I expected more from this one.Read all