Category Blu-ray

V/H/S/2 — What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

The newest film in the horror anthology series V/H/S drops today, October 6, so I went back and rewatched the second installment. I don’t think I need to say anything regarding the embarrassing third entry in the series, V/H/S Viral, and I shan’t be watching it prior to my 94 watch—or ever again.

Released in 2013, V/H/S/2 stands as the best in the series (so far, until I watch V/H/S/94). It managed to simplify the already basic premise of the first, while offering up some truly inspired horror set pieces from established directors in the genre. And, if you’re not aware of the basic premise, it’s a glorious marriage of found footage and anthology horror.

V/H/S/2 continues the trend of having a wrap around story replete with assholes. There was sexual deviancy and general delinquency in the first, and the second opens with a private investigator paid to film an affair and then using the blackmail to get more money from the cheater. The blackmailer and his accomplice (his girlfriend, if I’m not mistaken) abscond on another job in search of a college student that’s missing. A particularly gross line of dialogue is uttered about how the students mother has been calling, but the investigators aren’t worried and plan on finding and driving the kid around for a few days to wrack up expenses.

Once inside the home, the investigators look around and happen upon some V/H/S tapes. Like the first one, the tapes are viewed while spooky stuff happens in the periphery. It’s an extremely simple yet effective means of connecting the short films in a way that doesn’t seem too shoehorned or lazy. It’s also an eerie way to create some real atmosphere.

The first tape, “Phase 1 Clinical Trials,” is from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett—one of my favorite director/writer teams in recent years. Barrett also wrote and directed the wrap around segments (as well as a recent release on Shudder called Seance which I intend to check out soon).

As the first of four tapes, I believe it to be well placed in the roster. It’s a ghost story with an exciting twist: it’s told from the first person. Having recently lost an eye, Herman (played by director Adam Wingard) receives an experimental eye that records everything—including when he “takes a shit.” It’s a fun and simple idea that offers many scares in a way that truly utilizes the perspective it’s in.

Since the tapes aren’t a huge time sink, and writing about spoilers is lazy, I’ll simply say that the tape is perfectly utilized as a short. It’s honestly a bit impressive in that way, as it manages to ramp up tension and scares in a short period while still ending on an unnerving note. Wingard and Barrett need to work together more often. I love what they create.

The second tape, “A Ride in the Park,” is exactly that: a ride in the park. Only with zombies. And it’s absurdly entertaining. Directed by The Blair Witch Project alums Gregg Hale and Edúardo Sanchez (or Eduardo Sánchez, IMDb has both) and written by Jamie Nash (who went on to write the story for WNUF Halloween Special).

A mountain biker with a helmet mounted camera comes across a distressed woman. She ends up turning into a zombie and bites the POV biker. He then turns and chaos ensues, only in a way that I hadn’t seen before. It’s shown from a zombies point of view which means you get right up close to the gore, including all the gross wet sloshy sounds of intestines being tugged from a torso and… well, you get it. The short is gross in the best ways and, like the previous entry, wears its brevity with pride.

Now comes the third tape and my favorite in the film: “Safe Haven,” written and directed by my favorite modern action directors Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto. Go figure!

Outside of the context of this review, I could gush all day about these two directors. Evans blew me away and showed me what real action photography and choreography could look like in The Raid and its sequel, while Tjahjanto’s recent Netflix action film The Night Comes for Us proved to be an ultra violent hell fest of similarly styled filmmaking (I didn’t love it on my first watch but on my second I was hooked).

“Safe Haven” shows a documentary crew interviewing the head of a religious cult, and eventually being invited to see what the compound is like. As with everything else these directors have done, the results are bloody and brilliant. This one in particular is difficult to put into words without giving too much away. The pacing is impressive, what with how they develop the characters just enough, and how the underlying psychological terror of the cult begins to rear its awful head.

This tape is what cemented V/H/S/2 as a great gross out horror movie to watch with friends. It’s utterly insane, disgusting, and delightful. All I can say is that I’m highly looking forward to Timo Tjahjanto’s next entry in the franchise, with his new tape in 94.

The final tape had a tough enough job following up the brilliance of “Safe Haven,” so I’m not sure how to judge it on its own merits. It’s called “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” and sure enough, aliens intrude upon a slumber party.

The idea is fine, the execution is fine, it’s all just fine. Nothing about this final tape is particularly excellent and it even ends with a really grim image (beware animal lovers). Written by Jason Eisener and John Davies, and directed by Eisener, “Alien Abduction” follows several children and a few teenagers on an obnoxious evening when the parents are out of town. There are pranks and shenanigans and all sorts of things I didn’t think I’d have to sit through during a gory horror movie.

Some imagery stands out as creepy and the aliens look nightmarish enough, but the entire thing never feels like it needs to have been filmed—the mark of an amateurish found footage film. Mind you, it’s not terrible, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth after a few really clever shorts.

V/H/S/2 is a blast, even with one unwieldy short thrown in the batch. It’s also a mere 96 minutes, which makes it a quick and easy watch.

Here’s hoping the new one can reach these heights!

V/H/S—What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

In the scope of recent horror cinema, I’m hard pressed to name more than a couple found footage movies that are actually worth a watch (examples include the claustrophobic As Above, So Below, surprisingly effective Lake Mungo, and always atmospheric REC). While never rising to the heights presented in the aforementioned movies, V/H/S is notable for offering bits and pieces of effective horror and gore whilst regrettably being hampered by pacing issues, excessive sex, and varying levels of competency between all the shorts.

A gang of shiftless thugs wreak havoc via destruction and sexual assault as they try to make money. Already, the movie proves to be dealing in the exploitation subgenre of horror, and that’s about the only throughline it offers. The group of extremely unlikable and frankly unknown characters (both in terms of their motivations and mental stability) are then hired by another unknown person to break into an old man’s house and steal a V/H/S tape. Once inside the house, they are met with a corpse, a slew of TV’s showing static, and many V/H/S tapes. They begin to watch the tapes, as creepy stuff starts happening within the house.

V/H/S was a pretty cool concept back in 2012. Anthology found footage horror was and still is a niche in the genre, and the way the filmmakers go about this project certainly alludes to it’s overall quality. They basically had the wraparound story settled before any of the shorts were pitched. Traditionally the shorts are the bulk of the story, thus they tend to have a thematic resonance. There isn’t much of a connection between the tapes shown in the movie, and it doesn’t really matter because I can’t imagine horror fans are going to watch this with an eye for critical seriousness. And that’s by no means a dig at either the film nor the audience. The best thing V/H/S offers is a clear reverence for the genre and that’s seen in the creative liberties taken by each director.

With the wraparound story included, there are six parts to this anthology.

  • Excluding the wraparound, the first tale is called “Amateur Night” and it follows a group of young men as they prepare to have a night on the town with the goal of finding someone to secretly film while they have sex. A running theme in this entire film is sexual depravity as the lone character trait of the placeholder characters. Rather than offer something nuanced, the filmmakers tend towards the easier route of using sexual violence as a way to make the audience hate the characters. A cooler way to deal with something like that would be to make the audience actually care about the characters, and then feel at the very least something when they’re inevitably killed. Anyway, they take home a woman who isn’t at all what they expected. The best aspects of “Amateur Night” are the lead actress Hannah Fierman, who’s animalistic portrayal absolutely stole the show, and the end, when things actually happen. The entire opening sequence of, dare I say exposition?, went absolutely nowhere and just never seemed to end.
  • The following short, “Second Honeymoon,” follows a young couple on a road trip interspersed with similar awkward and blunt character work as the first short, and a decidedly fun and earned twist end.
  • “Tuesday the 17th” opens like a traditional slasher but manages to run away with a compelling enough diversion that I still can’t decide whether or not I like it. They utilize a glitch effect on screen that is a fun use of the titular technology on display, while also being a little underwhelming.
  • “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” is a refreshing and incredibly atmospheric ghost story told through Skype-like conversations with some truly great scares. Like the other shorts, it manages to present a story that you’ve probably seen before in a new-enough engaging way.
  • Finally, “10/31/98” is a spectacular concluding short with characters that aren’t all utter assholes. So, ultimately, you root for them and feel for them as they enter a house that may or may not be haunted.

It’s clear the filmmakers tried with V/H/S. For the most part, the effort is clear and is able to outshine the more lazy and exploitative elements. Thankfully, the sequel is similar enough in nature while upping the quality of the stories and trimming a lot of the fat.

Mad Max: Fury Road—What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

Action movies are all about motivation. The simpler the motivation, the better the action sequences. It really all comes down to caring, if even the slightest amount, about what’s happening on screen. It’s why Mad Max: Fury Road is such a successful movie. It takes a simple idea and kicks you in the teeth with it. It amplifies a simple chase sequence into the entire runtime and yet it’s never monotonous, it’s never ugly, and it’s never confusing. Even better, there are characters with ample motivation to root for, and villains with motivation to hate. Simply put, Mad Max: Fury Road does almost everything right by doing the bare minimum that an action movie needs to.

This is one of my favorite action movies and despite that, I’ve never seen the previous three films. Now that that’s out of the way, I feel like I’m able to offer my thoughts on the movie on it’s own. It’s fucking rad. It has a guy with a flame-throwing guitar dangling from a amplified display attached to the back of a supercharged post-apocalyptic big-rig truck. It’s excessive as fuck, and yet it’s unceasingly entertaining and impressive to behold. No matter how crazy the stuff on screen may appear, with a few clear deadly exceptions, what you’re seeing is real. The cars alone are a sight to behold, with their singular designs which add to both the characters and the world this movie inhabits. The things they’re able to do with the cars on camera, on the other hand, is something else entirely.

This movie is basically a stunt-reel that ran feature length. The shit these cars do, both practically and otherwise, is utterly insane. It’s also rated R, which is a delight, because many action movies fall short for having to cut footage to appease the notoriously conservative MPAA. But not this one. Off the top of my head I can recall someone getting their jaw torn asunder, people getting shot and stabbed with bloody results, and some extremely rough crashes. The movie is violent as all hell, but moves at a pace that doesn’t linger on any of the more gruesome moments. It’s all more a matter of fact that this world is as frenzied and kinetic as it is.

Mad Max: Fury Road won a slew of Oscars after it came out, including editing which is pretty cool. The Oscars, as a rule, don’t matter (especially when they dole out awards to by-the-numbers shit heaps like Bohemian Rhapsody, woof) but for the Academy to actually interpret the editing in Mad Max to be award worthy is impressive. The editing is one of the best parts of the movie, for how it cleanly and succinctly portrays the madness in the world, and messes about with frame rate. A bunch of the early action sequences feel like they’re played at a higher frame rate, making everything seem so quick and crazy. But, even so, it’s a delicate line to toe in making a coherent yet swift film. And they nailed it. Or rather, editor Margaret Sixel nailed it. (Apparently, she had around 470 hours of film to cut down to feature length, and watching it took three months.)

Fury Road released to universal acclaim, and an okay box office run for it’s budget. I’ve been pining for a sequel ever since, and hopefully the announced Furiosa movie can find it’s footing sooner than later.

There Will Be Blood—What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

What more can be said of There Will Be Blood? It’s a modern American classic from one of the best living directors and stars one of the best living actors. The score is nightmarish and shrill from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. The cinematography is stark and natural. It’s pretty much perfect.

While watching this again for maybe the tenth time, and having the rest of my Favorite’s Week watches under my belt, I noticed my proclivity for simple and passionately made films. There Will Be Blood is very simply about an oil baron who lusts for power, while a young pastor attempts to build his own dynasty.

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Daniel Plainview, whom we watch from the opening scene toil in the earth in search of oil. The opening of this movie is a mostly dialogue-free visual sequence of storytelling and it’s equal parts exciting and unnerving. Plainview detonates dynamite at the bottom of his makeshift well, unintentionally weakening his ladder and causing him to plummet to the floor and awaken with a broken leg. Despite the leg, Plainview accesses the area and notices dark residue among the exploded rock. He understands what can be gained and painstakingly crawls from the hole in the ground and into a nearby town. All of this is shown in near silent and solitary shots of a despondent looking prospector Plainview, which transitions into shots of him working the same location as before but with a crew of men, and the advent of thick black oil seeping from the ground.

Soon, he fathers an orphan whose father died at the bottom of the oil well, and a voice-over from Plainview chimes in. The orphan is grown, and standing beside his new father, as Daniel Plainview orates at the camera to an unseen group of townspeople. He’s hocking his wares, in a way. To them, he’s selling the promise of a fortune. To him, he’s stealing the subterranean liquid gold from beneath their feet.

In a matter of several shots, director Paul Thomas Anderson develops the central character as one of the best incarnations of the American Dream in cinema. From a hard-working, self-sufficient grime covered miner, to a clean and well-spoken merchant. When we meet Daniel Plainview, the self-made man, the oil man, he’s donning clean pressed clothes and a wide brimmed hat. This directly opposes the man we open the film with: a thick bearded and broken man on a mission for survival and prosperity.

The descent of Daniel Plainview is furthered when he is introduced to the town of Little Boston, by a plain spoken Paul Sunday, played by Paul Dano. Sunday promises a wealth of oil in his family lands, so long as he gets a bit of cash up front. After a bit of interrogation from Plainview and his work partner Fletcher, Sunday divulges his information and goes on his way.

There Will Be Blood is a very visual movie. A lot of the interrogation is informed by the way the actors react with their faces and body language, as opposed to the lines they deliver. It’s why the acting is regularly praised and award winning. It’s the product of a director and actor firing on all cylinders.

For a movie that’s over two-and-a-half hours long, There Will Be Blood seems to fly by. The editing, writing, and selective dialogue all lend to it’s pace. Scenes don’t need to linger to spoon feed information, nor do they unnecessarily show-off the brilliant film making on display. Everything feels perfectly placed and intentionally delivered. And that’s why it’s a modern classic.

There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece, and possibly Paul Thomas Anderson’s best work (depending on who you ask). It’s classical, subdued, and deliciously character driven. Day-Lewis delivers some of my most quoted lines (“Bastard in a basket!” and “I drink your milkshake!”), and the chess match between Plainview and Eli Sunday is a powerhouse to behold.

This is my favorite movie, out of a week of favorite movies. It’s full of subtext, some of which I find blunt, but it’s utterly absorbing. I love the dichotomy of the oil baron and the preacher, both selling lies to make money but with different contexts in the American zeitgeist. It’s a great time. Go watch it.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout—What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

The Mission: Impossible series are such a bizarre anomaly. First of all, as a spy/action series, these movies are more often good than bad. In fact, the only film in the series that doesn’t play well is the second one directed by John Woo. That, in and of itself, is crazy, given his past credits. Otherwise, the first one is a great tense thriller, the third one has a refreshing story with a great villain, the fourth one acts like Prisoner of Azkaban in how it revamped the series and gave it a new sense of style and then the fifth and sixth movies (written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie) are successively better.

I think that Mission: Impossible – Fallout is one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen. Definitely one of the best American action movies, at the very least. And, despite it being part of a successful series, you don’t really need to have seen the others. It’s definitely useful for full context, but the film itself defines the important bits of information that may have been seen in the previous films.

The plot, in simple terms, follows Ethan Hunt and his team as they try to reacquire nuclear weapons that got out of their hands. The CIA plants an extra operative with Hunt, as they fear another mishap. That’s all that really needs to be known of the plot if you haven’t seen it.

Fallout, though, isn’t great simply for its story, but for how the ample action set-pieces actually inform the plot. It’s a seamless movie, going action scene to action scene while telling the story every step. Not only do the action scenes progress the plot, they lay out some great character work.

An example is during the scene in France, after the deliriously exciting motorcycle chase. A French officer notices Ethan’s team transporting a prisoner with a bag over his head and tries to apprehend them, only to get shot by the bad guys. Hunt’s team is supposed to be working for the bad guys, so he has to make a moral choice to save the officer, or let her be mercilessly shot. He takes the initiative and kills the criminals he was pretending to be working with, to protect the innocent. It’s a thrilling scene with surprises that’s followed up with yet another incredibly exciting and story driven action chase scene. God this movie is good.

The only issue I have with the movie is that it wasn’t shot by Robert Elswit, like Rogue Nation was. Both movies were shot on 35mm, but it seems like Fallout is the one where noise can be seen in the darker scenes. It’s almost fuzzy and takes your attention away from the scene for a moment.

Otherwise, it’s a triumph. No sixth movie in a series needs to be as great as Fallout is and yet here we are. On an even more impossible note, Fallout made out well in the box office, assuring a few more entries in the series. So long as Tom Cruise is doing some crazy shit and Chris McQuarrie is filming it, I’ll happily be along for the ride.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is available on Amazon Prime as well as Hulu. Seriously, check this one out. It’s impeccable.

The Witch—What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

There’s been a boom in atmospheric horror in recent years. Films like It Follows, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and Hereditary strayed away from the more mainstream and generic horror that has been produced throughout the 2000’s. Sitting snugly within the bunch is one of my favorite horror movies, or simply one of my favorite movies from the past few decades: The Witch. Released in limited theaters in 2015 and opening wider the following year, The Witch is a masterpiece of atmosphere and period storytelling. It’s also short and available on Netflix!

The Witch is about a strictly puritan family in the 1630’s denouncing their colony and setting out into the wilderness of New England to start anew. The family, a mother and father with an eldest daughter, a younger son, two young twins, and a newborn baby, are soon left wondering whether their new home is safe, or if witchcraft is to answer for the disturbances.

Despite it’s brevity (around 90 minutes), The Witch has been maligned by general audiences for being slow, using period accurate old fashioned English, and lacking scares. Since there’s no way to objectively view art, I won’t simply disagree with these points. The movie is slow—if you don’t pay attention to the talented actors and film makers in front of and behind the camera. It’s tough to understand the characters—if you aren’t paying attention. There aren’t any scares—when you take away the main conceit of the movie and view it from a less-than-humane angle.

The beauty of film, and art in general, is that everyone can view it their own way. Not everyone needs to love the same thing! But when I see people shut this movie off after fifteen minutes, claiming the aforementioned reasons, it kind of sucks.

Here’s a horror movie set back in the 1630’s, a period rarely seen in film at all let alone done right, and it’s a magnificently careful rendering of that time. Listening to the commentary with writer/director Robert Eggers was first of all a treat, because I’ve seen the movie at least ten times now and it was nice to view it from a different angle, and also revelatory for all of the background info he doled out. He pointed out period accurate details, down to witch lore from 1630’s New England, as well as anything that was inaccurate.

As for the slowness of the movie, that’s purely up to the audience. My biggest flaw is that I find Blade Runner to be fairly boring (I have my reasons), so I can definitely understand someone not being entirely infatuated with The Witch. I will, however, offer the point that the characters in The Witch are entirely formed and perfectly acted. The film may not have many set pieces, but the story itself is rather quickly delivered and simple. It’s not like the story overstays its welcome, nor that it draws out any scenes. Each scene is immediately character focused, which is helped by the movies intimate setting and swift progression. Largely, there’s no time wasted anywhere. Even the cinematography helps to deliver the story.

Finally, the scares. The Witch is a scary story. Remember the Salem Witch Trials? This is set well before that, and, for fear of SPOILERS, contains an actual witch from the get-go. I flagged the spoiler there because the introduction of the witch is one of the most fulfilling yet equally disturbing scenes in the movie. If seeing a baby get stolen from his family and then subliminally/graphically killed to allow said witch to gain powers isn’t scary, you’re a kook. Especially when that’s the second scene in the movie.

The moment you see the witch on screen should be the moment you utterly give in to the movie and appreciate it for not going the route of metaphor. It’s a real witch. It’s not just some crazy religious anxiety that the family has, but a combination of the imprisonment felt by being trapped between both entities. Basically, it’s an incredibly clever and smart movie that uses subtext to it’s absolute advantage. It’s even meta, in that way. These atmospheric horror movies usually have a big societal message to them, sometimes being the answer to the horrific question at their center. But this movie is very literally about a witch that’s just fucking with a family. And it’s incredibly engaging.

The Witch is a powerhouse. It’s masterful in almost every way. The acting is something special, utilizing the always interesting Ralph Ineson (last seen in the brilliant Chernobyl series, as well as the even more brilliant The Hurricane Heist, and the really shitty Ready Player One), Kate Dickie (from Prevenge, a delightful romp, and Game of Thrones), and Anya Taylor-Joy (she’s just doing a lot of good stuff recently). The writing is realistic and paired tremendously with the well cast talent.

It’s a movie that’s almost perfect. It’s thrilling, for me at least, for how great it is. It’s also something that I love to recommend to people, so go check it out. It’s super good, I promise.

Paddington—What’s Playing?

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By Casey Campbell

Following up Friday the 13th Part IV during my “Favorites Week” is a movie that’s a little less graphically violent and sexual. Paddington is the story about a young bear moving from Darkest Peru to London, England and finding a new home. When you see the poster for Paddington, you probably think it’s some throw away kids movie made to hold a child’s attention for an hour and a half. Upon further inspection, and by that I mean after watching the movie, it’s clear that this sweet story is much more than meets the eye.

After an earthquake devastates young Paddington’s native Peruvian home, Aunt Lucy sends him off to London in search of a better life and the English explorer who befriended the bears many years before. Upon his arrival, Paddington meets the Browns, a family of four with their own distinct quirks. They agree to house him and help in his search for the explorer, no matter how many silly adventures it may take them on.

Paddington is a great film in it’s own right for how it treats the material, and for how much respect the filmmakers have for their audience. There is no pandering or condescension when it comes to the story and humor, and the film making itself stands out as clever, heartfelt, and earnest. Not to mention the often brilliantly subtle visual gags and one liners sprinkled throughout (“You want to call him ketchup? Ketchup the bear?”).

Paddington works as a perfect storm in front of and behind the camera, with Paul King writing and directing the movie with beautiful flourishes of style that always enhance the story, and a general aesthetic that’s reminiscent of a storybook (or a Wes Anderson movie). Colors are vibrant pastel, the cinematography informs the story, and writer/director Paul King keeps flashbacks and character information compelling by visually removing it from the rest of the film—sometimes with black and white newsreel-style footage, or depicting the Browns’ house as a dollhouse that opens to show each character in their respective rooms.

For such a creative and intelligent film, it’s no surprise it also delivers an important message about belonging. Paddington lost his home, and has to immigrate to London. Once there, his new neighbor Mr. Curry judges him (humorously of course, as it is a movie for young and old alike) for being a bear, without finding out anything about him. Curry teams up with the villain (Nicole Kidman!) and tries to capture the bear, just so that he can live without the knowledge of some outsider sleeping next door. The message is sound and subtle and I’m sure many that watch Paddington and it’s equally brilliant sequel would never watch for messaging of any sort. It’s just another element that elevates this already good movie into great territory.

There are too many things to say about Paddington, and most of them are basically just references to the funniest parts of the movie. It’s for kids, but it’s also for adults. It’s also pretty, funny, clever, and has great music. Check it out if you want to smile for an hour and a half.

Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter—What’s Playing?

Casey Campbell 1 Comment

By Casey Campbell

The fourth iteration of the, in my humble opinion, incredible first half of the Friday the 13th series is the best of the bunch, as well as a delightful opening to my “Favorites Week.” This series is rife with unoriginality and samples of the past, but it’s still a warm blanket to me. I love this series, even the shittiest entries (like when Jason was in New York for about fifteen minutes, or when he killed folks in space) are an absolute delight. Of the bunch, twelve in total, the fourth entry has to be my favorite.

This is the one where Jason reanimates to kill a slew of teens living next to Tommy Jarvis’s family.

Not only does this entry reintroduce the brutally beautiful make-up work of Tom Savini, who was last seen impaling Kevin Bacon through the neck in the original Friday the 13th, but it inadvertently creates a new lasting character in the series in Tommy Jarvis.

The third entry is a blast because of the 3-D visuals and all their excessive glorified gore, but also for how it expanded the mythos of Jason. It’s the one where Jason ditches the potato sack for his now famous hockey mask.

The fourth entry surpasses the second and third in my book because of how well it utilizes the previous films. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the original Friday movie, finding it fairly slow and boring. Sure, it has some great kills, hence my Kevin Bacon ref earlier, but it’s not nearly as entertaining as the next few. Friday part II is great, with great kills throughout (the wheelchair dude getting machete’d in the head and rolling down those excessively large stairs is a major contributor), but it lacks the memorable characters that you can directly name. Then there was the 3-D one, which put the effects before the story. It’s still fun, obviously, but not as great as the fourth.

Friday the 13th Part IV is great because of how it uses the strengths of past movies and creates the best possible Friday movie yet—which would remain the best one for over twenty years and counting.

I find it so surprising how these movies really do require a knowledge of the previous films to get a better and more enjoyable understanding. They’re probably the furthest thing from high art, yet they’re improved by the sequential ramping up of the story throughout the films. Ugh, these movies are bizarre. I see right through them, understand their various inherent flaws, and yet continue to go back to them. They’re fun, despite offering basically the same formula over and over again. Maybe that’s what I like about them after all, the familiar comfort.

I think this one is my favorite for how memorable it is despite the familiarity. It’s tough to forget Crispin Glover’s incredible dance, or the twins, or how Jason was finally taken out in the end by a bald Corey Feldman. Feldman’s character Tommy Jarvis would be brought back a few more times to differing results in future sequels. Other than Jason and his mother, who is only really mentioned after the first film, Jarvis is the only semi-consistent character in the bunch. And, he’s the first one to actually kill Jason.

These movies make me happy. They’re dumb fun, and the central idea never seems to get old. I’m pretty sure most of these movies are available on Amazon Prime, so you should rewatch them, or watch them for the first time if this rambling mess of a review piques your interest.