Welcome to the new home of Creepercast.com. Where we let the fear creep in with all things horror genre. News, Reviews, and more! STAFF:
J.P.: Editor (EIC - Editor in Cheif), Writer (CC - Content Contributor);
Joel Kenyon: Editor (AE - Assistant Editor), Writer (CC - Content Contributor); William S Mayfield: Writer (CC - Content Contributor)
Shaenon K. Garrity, the self-professed Mayor of Horror Movies, is mostly a cartoonist who just happens to watch a lot of scary movies while drawing cartoons. Check out her thematically appropriate horror movie for each day of the year at Horror Every Day. Continue to visit the Creepercast every day for that days featured Horror offering.
Shaenon K. Garrity, the self-professed Mayor of Horror Movies, is mostly a cartoonist who just happens to watch a lot of scary movies while drawing cartoons. Check out her thematically appropriate horror movie for each day of the year at Horror Every Day. Continue to visit the Creepercast every day for that days featured Horror offering.
Texas Frightmare Weekend presented by Arrow Video is proud to reveal the 2018 t-shirt art! Designed by legendary artist, author and filmmaker Clive Barker (Hellraiser, Night Breed) this all new art was commissioned exclusively in celebration of the 13th annual event this May 4-6, 2018.
Stories about the make-up and transformation scenes have become legendary, and are mostly apocryphal. The transformation of Chaney from man into monster was certainly laborious. The series of makeups took five to six hours to apply, and an hour to remove. Jack Pierce had originally designed it for Henry Hull in Werewolf of London (1935) but Hull argued that the disguise made no sense within the plot, since two characters had to recognize "Dr. Glendon" even in his werewolf form. Pierce was ordered to design a second version which left more of Hull's face recognizable. Pierce then recycled his design for the 1941 film (Wikipedia).
As with all of my reviews of films for The Creepercast, I fully recommend that you check each and every one of them out. I am one man and this is my opinion. I've seen plenty of movies that received reviews that were the complete opposite of how I saw the film. These writers, directors, producers and actors all put a lot of time and love into these projects. They deserve to be seen and appreciated for what they are. Everyone has a dream and I fully support the people that take the time to make theirs a reality. With that being said....
I remember a time, back in 2005, where I stumbled across a little horror film by Neil Marshall called 'The Descent'. It was an all female led, claustrophobic film about underground monsters that prey upon these unknowing amateur spelunkers. It caught me be surprise and set a new standard for horror films. It also introduced me to a wonderful actress by the name of Shauna MacDonald. She stole the show as the lead in the film and seemed to be a force to reckon with. Because of this, when I heard of a recent horror film called 'Nails', also starring Shauna, I was intrigued to say the least. It finally hit Netflix a couple of weeks ago and I finally had to chance to see what she had been up to recently. It seemed like a simple premise and I liked the idea of a straightforward kind of story that keep things all in one place. Sometimes those are the most promising ways to tell a scary story. Put our protagonist in a situation where the antagonist is always around the next corner, but there are only so many corners you can run too. In an effort to keep this one kind of short, let's delve into the plot.
Shauna's character is a woman who seems to have her life all together, until she gets hit by a car and ends up in a rehab hospital. Not the good kind, but the kind that's haunted by some evil forces and not just the ones who are running the place. While she's laid up recovering, she's got no ability to move and can't even talk. She relies on the staff to take care of her and a little computer to do the speaking for her. During the course of her stay, strange things begin to happen. She seems to be the target of some sort of stalker or potential murderer. No one believes her though. No one has seen this person and just chalk it up to her being a little loopy from the medications. Her husband doesn't believe her either. He initially tries to help with her paranoia, by having cameras placed on and around her room. This leads to people doubting her even more, as when the person shows up, there's nothing on the camera to prove it. Since she has a lot of time on her hands, she begins researching the hospital and comes to find out that a former employee used to steal little kids fingernails and also murdered 5 of them. He did it as an “angel of mercy”, but was a murderer none the less. He killed himself in the closet in her room and had earned the nickname, Nails, prior to his death. The woman then believes that this is the man who is trying to do the same to her. Everything begins to spiral out of control as we soon start to question everything. That is, until the final showdown between Nails and the woman and her daughter. Who will be victorious? The results may surprise you.
This is Dennis Bartok's directorial debut. I will say this, the film's pacing and overall tone was solid. There was a lot good to be said for the basic structure of the film. The main problem was with the villain. He was.... lame. In the shadows, he created a bit an imposing stature, but as soon as he was in full view then it all fell apart. There's also a scene at the very end that was quite possibly one of the dumbest deaths I've ever seen committed to celluloid. It was incredibly cringe worthy and made me lose what little faith was left in the film. Another thing that was a bit problematic about this movie, was that no one is really killed until the end. At that point, literally every one is fair game for Nails to kill. Despite the entire premise being set up around his desire to kill our main character. It's like all bets are off and he's going to go on a rampage and just forget the other 80 minutes that just happened. That's a horror movie no no. Shauna really does the best that she can with this role. She doesn't really have much speaking and her primary form of communication is the little lap top and her body language. Despite these limitations, she was excellent. That's not an easy undertaking and she took it like a champ. The rest of the cast seemed a bit unlikable and you don't really care too much about them. Even her male nurse, that kind of befriends her, isn't much in the good guy mode. I'm not sure why Tom Abrams and Dennis Bartok made this creative decision, but in order to make horror movie deaths have an impact, you have to care about the people getting killed.
Finally, when the credits rolled, I realized how little I felt about this film. It started off with some great potential. It had really solid atmosphere and good direction. The hospital itself was a creepy character all on its own, but there were so many other wasted opportunities that I left the whole experience feeling let down. I'm not sure if the plan was to try and franchise this idea, but I'm hoping this ends up just being a one off outing for 'Nails'. I'm hoping that Mr. Bartok continues playing around in our horror sandbox. I think he's got potential, he just needs a better story and maybe something without a primary villain that seems so designed to be an icon. Just make a scary movie and focus and making us pee our pants. The rest will fall in line, if the film is strong enough. Horror franchises aren't generally created, they're just born. I'd give 'Nail's a 2 out of 5 start rating. It's not the worst I've seen, but it doesn't ever need to be seen again. P.S. Shauna MacDonald, please keep making movies. Thank you.
If you would like to see some other, better horror, check out: 'The Descent', 'Fritt Vilt aka Cold Prey' or 'Halloween 2' (1981)
Who knew that actor John Krasinski was more than just half of the delightfully quirky and cute couple that entertained us on The Office? Well, of course, if you had your ear to the independent film ground you'd know about the equally quirky RomCom 'The Hollars,' but other than that, with the exception of is bombshell marriage, we haven't heard a lot from Krasinski until recently. This fall he is expected to thrill us as a young Jack Ryan on Amazon, but before that he managed to further hone his acting, directing, producing, and writing skills with a little survival horror film. A QUIET PLACE's original treatment is written by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, drawing on their mutual love for silent films. In a sweep of brilliance and passion, John Krasinski took over their concept and created an amazing piece of art and suspenseful horror. Not only does Krasinski direct, but he had the audacity to cast himself as the lead, and portrays the character with deft skill. To further accent the audacity his real-life wife, Emily Blunt (Into the Woods, The Girl on the Train) plays his wife, where she dominates her scenes with an Oscar-worthy performance, that is if a true horror film could ever receive an Oscar. Krasinski and Blunt seem to be naturally conditioned to play these protective parents in an apocalyptic time with Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) and Noah Jupe (Wonder) logically rounding out the cast as their children trying to grow, cope, and be human in a time when silence can save their lives.
A QUIET PLACE doesn't waste any time getting to the story so neither do we here... With little to no fanfare, we find ourselves in a deserted, possibly apocalyptic city in which our family of five, the Abbots, are quietly gathering supplies in a ransacked department store. The fact the beginning of the film doesn't bother with exposition and just drops us into the middle of the desperation of it all sets the pace for the rest of the film. Lost and not sure what is going to happen next, Krasinski knows the rules of survival horror but doesn't feel limited by them. Instead, he builds the opening tension, sets us up for something bad to happen, then lets it happen before we've had a chance to register exactly whats going on. This introduction does nothing to give us the background to the conditions the family has found themselves in but focuses us on the family and their loss, suffering, angst, and struggle to find normalcy in a new world where to make noise will promise certain death. From this point on the attention to detail is incredible as we learn just what this family has done to adjust their lives, like sandy walkways that mute footsteps, homemade crochet game pieces, and even the elaborate set up created to distract the creatures when Blunt's character is ready to give birth. This scene alone is enough to garner awards for everything from acting to visual effects and has earned its place in iconography via the still that graces the official poster art above. Finally, we do get our exposition through the eyes of their deaf child, and from then on anything that can go wrong will.
A QUIET PLACE is truly a horror film in obvious ways, i.e. creatures that want to eat to us while we try to survive in a desolated world; but it is also about parents teaching his children survival when its ok to relax, and willing to sacrifice anything to ensure their safety. In fact, it is that which caused Krasinski, a self-professed scaredy cat and previously not a horror fan, to become obsessed with creating the film. You can tell he did his homework, with homages from Jaws to Alien, with camera skills and story manipulations, amazing character choices like Simmonds and Jupe, and the extremely important use of sound in a mostly silent film make him look like a veteran rather than a newbie horror director with a few experiments to try out. Pay special attention to the lack of sound during scenes revolving around the talented and deaf Simmonds, or the overwhelming use of sound when the creature is making its move. A QUIET PLACE is also extremely well self-contained from beginning to end, complete with teases and twists that lead us, like a parent through an extremely creepy haunted attraction, to an extremely cathartic end. Speaking of the end, and I definitely do not want to give away anything, my greatest fear as I came to understand the creatures, or aliens, is that the film would go too far in a Shyamalan direction. Thankfully, Krasinski isn't your average horror director and very few similarities carried through to the end. What we do have is a brilliant offbeat horror film designed to keep you on the edge of your seat and feeling for this family.
There is so much about A QUIET PLACE that deserves being pointed out but in the spirit of expecting you will see it, we'll keep our opinions limited to these few. We only ask that if you would like to contribute to the discussion further please do so in the comments below, we will love to hear your thoughts!
A QUIET PLACE premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival as the opening-night film on March 9, 2018. It was selected from 2,458 submissions and earned raves from critics. Following its premiere, the film experienced social media growth to under 52 million views across multiple platforms, outpacing 'Get Out' (2017), which had 46.9 million views. Paramount Pictures released A QUIET PLACE to theaters on April 6, 2018, alongside Blockers, Chappaquiddick, and The Miracle Season. Despite the competition, A QUIET PLACE was the second biggest domestic debut of 2018 behind Black Panther. Currently running at your local theater, A QUIET PLACE is a rejuvenating reinvention of suspenseful horror that everyone must see to believe.
I don't usually like to give star ratings, but if I did, A QUIET PLACE would be a solid 5 out of 5 (which normally I would never rate a film that high), absolutely an early contender for the horror film of the year.
