And we’ve made it to week three. Note to self: if a movie has bad reviews on Letterboxd, steer clear (I’m looking at you, Vicious). I was also going to review The Man in My Basement in this blog post, but I allowed myself to fall asleep near the end of it because it was not great – I’m sad to say Willem Dafoe did full frontal for nothing in that movie. Anyway, onto my reviews!
Vicious (2025)
Polly is lost in life, living alone (in her sister’s ginormous house) with no job or prospects, when she is given a mysterious box. She is told to place something she needs, something she hates and something she loves inside, otherwise there will be devastating consequences – for her and for those she loves.
My first red flag for Vicious was Dakota Fanning – I’m not sure whether it’s because she picks terrible scripts or she’s not a particularly engaging actor, but I want to avoid any projects she’s involved in for the foreseeable (I said the same thing after the Watchers and Ripley, but here we are). I thought Kathryn Hunter might save the day, but unfortunately this convoluted mess of a movie couldn’t be elevated by her wonderfully creepy performance.
My second red flag was the fact that Vicious was supposed to have a theatrical release, but was instead put straight to streaming. Hmm.
I’ve noticed a lot of modern horrors start with a simple and intriguing premise, but then doesn’t know where to go with it. A bunch of nonsensical plot twists are thrown in so the audience can’t guess the cliché ending, but it just makes the experience an incohesive and unenjoyable watch. That was definitely the case here. There was no emotion, no grip, no reason for me to care for the protagonist. 1.5/5.
The Birds (1963)
I realised when I put on The Birds that I had no idea what it was about, except that evil killer birds terrorise a small seaside town. In terms of the birds’ involvement in the movie, that is the whole premise, but there is a lot more to the human characters than I had expected, including stalking, deception, home invasion, homoerotic tension and downright brattishness – and that was Tippi Hedren’s character alone.
While this movie had some damn sinister birds in it, and the characters were certainly compelling in a batshit crazy kind of way, the pacing was quite slow and the premise didn’t really go anywhere. The situation with the birds wasn’t explained or concluded, which is an approach I usually prefer in horror movies, but in this it felt empty and I was surprised when the credits rolled…was that it?!
That being said, I can see how The Birds inspired a generation of filmmakers. I loved the way Hitchcock focused on the characters and their dramas so closely that you forgot it was a horror movie, and how the evil threat in the movie was indiscriminate about its victims, but the overall idea lacked depth. 3/5
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
A family are on vacation together, travelling through the New Mexico desert on their way to San Diego. They stop at a gas station and the hillbilly who runs it suggests a faster route they could take. The family heed his advice but run into trouble as their car tyres burst on a hidden spike strip. The car collides into a boulder, which totals the vehicle. As they start trying to figure out how they’re going to find help, the locals gather in the hills, watching them, and they’re not exactly friendly.
I have watched the original 1977 movie, so I steeled myself for a horrendous time. I’m always worried when watching horror movies made in the late 1990s and early 2000s – there was a spiteful viciousness to many of them that I find hard to stomach, as well as a lot of anger-fuelled misogyny and body shaming, but I was pleasantly surprised by the Hills Have Eyes (a sentence I never thought I’d write). While the movie is violent, depicts a lot of cruel behaviour and paints disfigured people as monsters, the overall tone of the movie is – dare I say it – warm. You feel for the characters and want them to survive, which does make it more upsetting to watch, but isn’t the point of horror movies to feel all that? And what’s more, this isn’t an out and out nasty movie – there is heart and strength to it, and the victims aren’t just victims (although the villains are just cartoonish villains, but hey, you can’t win them all).
I was expecting to feel hollow after this movie, but instead it highlighted what’s missing from so many other horror movies. Humanity. I don’t want to watch snuff porn with irritating characters that ‘deserve to die’, I want more movies like this. 4/5.
Twelve more days until Halloween! See you next week for week 4.
If you’re looking for a spooky little story for Halloween month, my novella, The Festivities of Morkwood, is available in paperback and ebook:
You probably haven’t heard of a village called Morkwood.
It’s unlikely you would have passed through it, let alone stopped to visit – Morkwood sits in the corner of nowhere, unassuming and quiet.
Until December, that is.
Each day in the lead up to Christmas, the villagers of Morkwood come together to open the doors of a giant advent calendar called the Advent House. Everyone is expected to participate in a tradition steeped in local legend.
But not every door of the Advent House is something to look forward to. Like most long-established rituals, this one is rooted in fear.
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