WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
I’ll be honest, it is actually really hard to recommend any of the films below to those of you reading this. You will probably notice as you go through that I possibly enjoyed 2 of these films maximum! Let’s hope things get better in part 3…
The Man in Room 6
I was genuinely really confused by what the horror element of this film was supposed to be – until we started hearing the rattled breathing of the old man which actually spooked me a little bit. Maybe because this is considered as an art house film however, this doesn’t come across as your typical horror film would. Now that isn’t to say that there aren’t a couple of ‘what the f*** moments’ and horror is said to have some theme of supernatural or occult as part of it, which for William to have lived as long as he has, there would be something supernatural behind it as he tries to convince Carrie of such. This film seemed to have an interesting filmography about it as most films would show the present scenes in colour and the past in black and white but this was done in the reverse. I got a little bit lost when it felt like we had suddenly changed storyline with about an hour to go. Also, I would say that it doesn’t need to be 2.5hrs but it definitely gets a little darker towards the end.
7 Deadly Sins
For any one that looks this film up this is also known as Charlie Charlie. I’m going to be completely honest I found this film really confusing at first! The opening scene was a great intense start but then it felt like there was no relevance to the rest of the film. The confusion got a little worse with the scene about Misty and her dad but when they FINALLY started playing Charlie Charlie, a similar game to that of a Ouija board, about 48 minutes into the film, everything began to make sense! I actually think this film had a really good concept, I just don’t think it was executed as well as it could have been.
8 Days to Hell
Weirdly enough, I actually watched this and 7 Deadly Sins back to back and both of them star Eric Roberts! Interestingly he’s not in either film for very long. It’s very rare that the stories in an anthology film are connected to each other. However, with this film, each one seems to follow an ancillary character from the story before and they become the main character. A tenuous connection I know, but a connection nonetheless. Unfortunately, just like 7 Deadly Sins I was left feeling really confused about the plots – were each of these stories supposed to be some sort of countdown to the arrival of hell on Earth? There just doesn’t seem to be any pay off at the end to make this clear.
June 9
I think I say this every time I use one, but you can’t go wrong with a found footage film right? When the story of Boston Mills, or Hell Town, is told – this film starts to remind me of the Blair Witch Project. I’m sure it’s obvious that everything you see in this film is leading up to events taking place on 9th June 1999. What’s genius however is that you are led to believe that everything that seems to happen to them is caused by the supernatural, by the curse of Boston Mills when in fact it’s actually the people of Boston Mills! The more disturbing thing being that they have clearly done this before. The main thing I will say, is prepare yourself for a rather violent and pretty dark ending, made worse but quite how real it all looks!
Ten
I’ll be honest, I’m never sure about all female horror films but I’ll come back to that at another time. For what could be considered as a reasonably dark opening, the credits for want of a better word are pretty cheesy in comparison. It’s probably a bit cruel but I found all the characters so irritating that I actually didn’t mind any of them dying. They’re probably not supposed to come across this way, but where the acting is rather bad – you can’t help it. I guess the only thing on my side here is that the director clearly didn’t care much either as no one had an actual character name more than ‘The Renegade’ or ‘The Historian’. I’d also love to know how the actress survives having her neck broken, or at least long enough for her to speak. I get the feeling this film is meant to be about the distrust that fear creates in people. I also got a little confused as to why they are Russian at the end
Red 11
It is crazy to think that this film is based on Robert Rodriguez’s own experience in a research hospital which helped him to finance El Mariachi – Red 11 being the number he was given during his own process? You always expect a low budget film to look cheap but then you may not have watched a Robert Rodriguez film before. I did wonder if this film was partially inspiration for segments of Planet Terror. What I love about this film is that it isn’t exactly scary – especially not straight away, just strange things gradually begin to happen. The real spooky stuff starts after 11 gets sick. Much like his other films – this isn’t overly gory, it just messes with your head a little in places, but there are a few moments that are a little gross. Actually, and it didn’t pop into my mind until 30 minutes from the end, but it reminds me a little of Chronicle.
