Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

What's that behind him? Don't worry, the music tells you. ** If you pass by the Darkside blog from time to time, you are well aware that I devote many a review to the paranormal horror subgenre. You get some decent found footage/document entries that have their moments. Often or not, though, I wind up more than a bit disappointed or underwhelmed. I guess you could even call it the surreality horror genre…where reality in front of a recording camera reveals things quite alien to the norms of what we believe, or take in with our senses. The Paranormal Activity films piggybacked off of the Blair Witch Project and Cannibal Holocausts in documenting the horrors of both what we can’t see and what we do. A little bit of both under the right presentation and direction can be quite successful. I always pimp the critically panned Lake Mungo which has been considered the worst of its years “8 Films to Die For” because I felt it did just that. It focused on the inability to shake...

It Follows: **** Unfriended: **½ It was an interesting trip to the movies this afternoon for a little horror excursion which had one film that took us back to the 80s where you saw telephones on the wall with an actual receiver and old box televisions with an antennae sticking out, while another firmly planted us in the modern era of “imessage”, Skype, Youtube, Facebook, and Google. It was quite a contrast, I tell you. It Follows was such a welcome sight for this horror fan. I loved, loved, loved the aesthetic on display here where the camera often rotates from right to left and vice versa so glacially and methodically I did believe I was watching something a lot different than the norm of today’s filmmaking. The score was a wow for this ole boy. I was sure jiving to its panic beats and building of dread. Good stuff. Unfriended fits in perfectly with the age we live in and cognitively presents how today’s youth communicate with the advances in the way ...

 *** I think one of the hardest horror films to make is a satire. Every horror filmmaker, particularly those on the indie circuit, seems to have tried their hand at a horror comedy, but the satire is a bit more difficult. A satire on something quite popular within horror—whether it be vampires, werewolves, or the undead—oftentimes has to be balanced between a poking fun at its subject in an ingenious or clever way and giving what the horror fans crave (that being horror).  When Philip Mora’s Howling III opens, I was afraid he would once again tread the same pratfalls that damaged his previous installment in the Howling franchise. A wide-smiling tribe seems well pleased with the werewolf they have captured. It appears as if this is a ruse as those in front of the camera seem to be guided by the person behind the camera; yet, this is considered plausible evidence of a werewolf by what the film considers a certifiable scientist. When he talks with others about this, the...