Katharine Isabelle & Emily Perkins In Ginger Snaps (2000)

Carrie Directed by Brian De Palma (1976)

US (2019) dir. Jordan Peele

Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis SCREAM (1996) dir. Wes Craven

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) poster (detail) by Matthew Joseph Peak

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE 1985 | dir. jack sholder

I get this ache...

And I, I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces

Ginger Snaps (2000)

The evolution of Kayako Saeki (1998 - 2016)

Ginger Snaps 2

“Done!” “What’s that?” “It’s a secret!” “What’s with you?!”

I hate getting actor crushes, especially since this one is the strongest I’ve ever had. Like, he might be my exception for men, he’s really hot and good at acting. But I feel guilty having a crush on him, because he has a fiancee and I always thought it was weird to have actor crushes. I kind of get it now, but I’m acting like a school girl in love. 

Hellraiser (1987)

Review under the break

The movie Thoroughbreds came out in 2017 without really drawing attention to itself. Which is unfortunate which because this movie was so much more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. With the lead actors being from movies I actually quite enjoyed, Lily from The VVitch and Amanda from Me, And Earl And the Dying Girl. Now great acting doesn’t always mean a great movie, but without these actors being as talented as they are then I don’t think this movie would be as tolerable.

And by tolerable, I mean how much I love to hate these main characters. The main (kinda) three are Lily, Amanda, and Tim. Lily and Amanda are rich high school kids that are shown to be disconnected from life, Lily being more so than Amanda. Amanda having something that is more of a mental illness that haves her have no way of experiencing emotion and Lily being upset at the disruptions in her life. Then there is Tim, who is no character you should feel for, who is introduced as a man who is convicted of statutory rape. These three being the line up for our film doesn’t bode well for a happy ending.

The synopsis of this film in my own words is this: Lily, old friend of Amanda, is asked by Amanda’s mother to tutor/hang out with Amanda to help her. Amanda cuts off Lily’s facade by telling her she knows that her mother is paying her to be around her and tells her of her inability to experience actual emotions and explains that she has only learned to mimic said emotions. During their next study session Amanda is confused as to why Lily invited her over again since she didn’t contact her mother for another fee, and after Lily has almost won Amanda over by saying she wants to be with her Mark, Lily’s step father, walks into the room. It becomes apparent that Lily and Mark have a very strained relationship, but yet never truly goes into. Amanda after seeing this and hearing Lily’s anger on how she believes Mark just likes to make her life hell, asks if she wants to kill him. To get off this conversation they go down to the wine cellar and Amanda keeps berating her with questions on whether or not she’d like to kill him. Lily snaps and tells her to get out of her house while it shows later how she might be contemplating this question.

The following scene is Amanda in her room calling the company that Lily had an apparent internship at, they do not. Then she calls Lily’s school pretending to be a delivery service, but getting no quick answer if Lily actually goes there.

It then cuts to Lily getting ready for a party and her mother making plans for a spa trip this weekend. While at the party Lily learns of what happened to Amanda’s horse before the movie started. Before learning the gory details Tim is now introduced. Yelling and self righteous-ing ensues as Tim explains to Lily that these kids live in a hamster home and have no idea what real life entails. This ideology doesn’t stop Lily after she learns she won’t be able to be readmission to her old school and will be sent to the school her step-father’s friend run for mentally unstable kids. Mark adds nothing helpful to the conversation when he states her Dad had to pay her way in her old school. Upset by this, she loosens up one of his bike wheels, possibly to kill him. The plan fails and she goes over to meet with Amanda and tries to help her kill her step-father. Amanda reluctantly agrees even though she believes that Amanda is just lashing out on extreme emotions. During this talk Lily brings up Amanda’s horse and what happened. Amanda explains that her Mom gets weepy at decisions of putting down an animal and decided to put it on herself to do it. The following dialogue is very gory so I won’t be summarizing it just know that Amanda though doing this was a much better option than a seemingly painless death.

They track down Tim at a nursing home and corner him into helping them kill Mark. Tim is upset at their plan to blackmail him into it as they have evidence of him selling drugs to minors and he wrongly convicts Amanda of this being her plan and dragging Lily into this. After a bit of a tussle they go over the plan once more and tell him where to grab the gun and when to do it.

So over the weekend Amanda is at a group therapy thing while Lily is at the spa wondering how their plan is going. Cuts to most of their plan working out and before we can get confirmation it cuts back to the spa with Mark showing up to pick them up. Lily, obviously upset about this, starts smoking in her kitchen about how they should upload the evidence as planned if Tim didn’t go through with the plan and Amanda tries to talk her out of it. Mark arrives home and Lily tries to kill him there, but Amanda takes away her knife and hides while Lily gets chewed out about being spoiled and unempathetic. Amanda agrees with Mark and is asked to leave by Lily again. 

Time passes and Amanda is called over by Lily again. Confused as to why to urgent text but all they talk about is mortality and the meaning of their own lives. Amanda admits she has never really thought if her life was really meaningful and hesitates for an answer Lily is washed over with quilt and tells her to stop drinking the juice Lily gave her and explains she drugged it with the purpose of blaming the murder on Amanda. Amanda chugs down the roofied drink and Lily gets to work as the rowing machine upstairs comes to a halt and later Lily comes back bloodied and starts putting the evidence on Amanda who is still asleep.

Time skips again and it’s Lily stepping out of her car to go to an interview for college at a restaurant. She meets Tim, who works valet for the restaurant, and asks her how she is and how Amanda is. She explains she got a letter from Amanda a week ago from where she is. It goes to voice over with Amanda explaining her new life at the mental facility and the dreams she has of the horses and the murder that happened. It cuts back to Tim asking her if she read the letter, and she responds that she did not and just trashed it.

Now the soundtrack for this movie, very indie movie esque but laid back enough where I though a soundtrack like this would do better in A Quiet Place (which ironically enough was anything but quiet with how loud the soundtrack is).

One sentence synopsis: Good breeding gone bad and first world problems gone medieval.     

I’ll give this movie an 7.2/10 just because of how awesome the camera work is and how fun it is to hate these characters (especially Lily)         

There better not be another movie after this goddamn jurassic world 2 bullshit because the first one wasn’t even that good if you took off your damn rose colored for a second and actually paid attention to the movie and how everyone in this damn world is an idiot

do people really not remember the 2nd/3rd movie where people (typically large amounts) kept dying because someone was like “but dinos are cool so lets keep them around a little longer” right after the first one was like don’t go fucking with nature you bunch of dingos and let them die in peace once more you ungrateful twats

plus if i have to go through another scene of dinos on a plane or the studio trying to (and very noticeably) make Chris P. the lovable, misunderstood, i’m-the-only-one-who-understands-these-animals weirdo from jw1 i will shoot myself in the foot 

but people will love it because jurassic park was so good, not jurassic world where it is a direct sequel

Review under the break (will contain spoilers)

Museum: A Serial Killer Is Laughing In The Rain is the live action adaption of the manga with the same name. To start out, I had never heard of the manga until I was doing research on this movie after I watched it. The manga came out in 2013 and this film came out in 2016, so I’m a little late on this bandwagon. But no time like the present to get to watch a thriller with an artistic killer.

Synopsis: The film starts with the second to be victim: some lazy NEET that only provides connections to the first victim later. This is where we see our killer for the first time too, in his frog mask glory. By whatever way, Frog Man captures the NEET and ties him up in a field somewhere. Some bad stuff goes down.

But we don’t get to see it until later, now we watch the police department go over the evidence of the first murder victim. “Dog Food Penalty”, where the victim was tied up and bitten/eaten to death by vicious dogs. They talk to the boyfriend and find out that the penalty related to the fact she had to give up her dog because her boyfriend was allergic, but all in all she was a very nice lady. So what the hell? Between this, we also get insight to to Detective Sawamura’s family life. Apparently, his wife recently left home with their son because Sawamura cares more about his job than his family’s wellbeing.

Soon after they discover the corpse of NEET man, who has had been skinned with his baby weight matched by the skin taken off, “Mother’s Pain Penalty”. The police force soon tries to find a connection of the two killings, and they soon do. Both were jurors of a case of “Girl in Resin” along with Sawamura’s wife. They take this as a major lead and begin contacting the judges and jurors apart of the case. Sawamura is taken off due to his personal connection to the case.

The “Girl in Resin” case ended with the suspect being guilty and him taking his life. Expecting this to be a revenge killing for the murderer. Sawamura goes off looking for his wife, who he suspected to be with a friend so he went to her apartment. The boyfriend said she was at work at the hospital nearby and they left accordingly. After explaining the situation to the friend she admits that the wife is staying at her place. After a bit, the friend explains that she lives alone and has no boyfriend (dun dun DUN). Turns out the pretend boyfriend was the killer and has now kidnapped the wife and son.

More people get killed in more horrific ways, and while out with his subordinate, the killer approaches them and the detectives chase after them. Sawamura finds him on the rooftop of a building holding his friend by the necktie. The killer explains that he was the “Girl in Resin” killer and is pissed he didn’t get the recognition he deserved as an artist. Frog Man kills the subordinate after the sun come out and has to scratch himself. This leads to more evidence of the killer.

Sawamura, now an renegade, goes to investigate on his own of “allergic to the sun people” and their severity. After visiting a allergen hospital, he threatens the head doctor to give him the name of the person who gets allergic just looking at the sun. Getting the name he travels to go get his wife and son back. But worse comes to worse, he gets trapped in the basement. He is forced to solve a puzzle connecting to his family and is fed mysterious burgers of unknown origin. After solving the puzzle, the missing pieces spelled out eat on a picture of his family, he opens the door to a butcher area where he opens the refrigerator door to the heads of his wife and son. He has been eating their bodies this whole time!

Plot twist, he hasn’t. It was just a ploy to weaken his spirit. The wife and son are still alive and held hostage of our killer. The killer then explains that if Haruka, the wife, wants to save her son she has to be killed by her husband dressed in the frog costume. She hurriedly agrees and trades places with him while they’re being chased. Sawamura though, about to shoot his wife thinking she’s the killer, finds out it’s her and apologies about being a horrible father and husband. Frog Man shows up and is pissed no one has gotten killed yet. He holds Shota at gun point and threats to pull the trigger if the wife isn’t killed soon. After a tagged on plot point with Sawamura’s father, he pleads for himself to be killed for his family to be left alone. Just after he is shot in the leg by accident, the police force shows up and the killer is given his tragic backstory of being the survivor of the murdering of his parents. Sawamura is safe and his family life is going great. Killer is placed in the hospital for care after being exposed to sunlight for too long and another plot twist is stated. He wasn’t the only survivor of the murders of his parents of childhood, he had a twin sister. The very same head doctor of the allergen hospital is his sister. She kills him as ridding the world of his evil. It cuts back to Sawamura finally putting his family first and shows up for Shota’s marathon. The camera then takes the angle through Sawamura’s camera and reveals Shota is showing signs of being allergic to sunlight.

The movie then cuts to blacks.

Sentence synopsis: Artistic killer and detective fight to overcome struggles of family issues. OR Childhood murder trauma leads to being allergic to light, a probable common thread in most serial killers now I guess.

This movie is amazing in the most stupidest way. It has some good parts, the “EAT” almost made me retch, and the reveal of the killer’s face was priceless on how well done the make up is. I watched this film on the way to Japan, finding it only out of pure luck on a 14 hour flight. I’m so glad I found it, the characters are interesting and the acting from each actor was amazing. The father story was a bit too obviously tagged on, showing us a reason why Sawamura was going to take the bullet. But he doesn’t need such a convoluted reason when his son is involved, it’s his son!

Overall rating: 6.4/10, watched it for the interesting take on killings, stay for the actor’s portrayal of each piece of dialogue (and that really cool car scene chase, so amazing and suspenseful)