My #31daysofhalloween challenge 2024

 31 days of Halloween, 2024

Its been a good one this year. This time I had the aid of an Arrow subscription. Have been meaning to try it out for years and I really like the service. Might get one on a longer term when I can afford it again.

There are well over 31 films and other forms of spooky media on this list so I don't feel the need to number the list this time. I will say a little about each one though. All of these are first time watches unless stated otherwise.

Oddity - new Irish feature film. Great start to the month, creepy and unsettling.  (Shudder and elsewhere)
Blood of My Blood - Italian gothic, very atmospheric and creepy but not scary. (Mubi)
Imprint - Takashi Miike's spot on the Masters of Horror anthology. Was considered to extreme to broadcast and never made it to TV. A disturbing period piece in the tradition of Teruo Ishii that draws on some of the darker parts of Japanese social history that get too easily romanticised. I loved it. (Physical)

Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend - a 30 minute short from Abigail Thorne of the Youtube channel Philosophy Tube. The idea of Dracula as an abusive ex partner is fun and they do a lot with it. (Nebula Exclusive)

Bubba Ho-Tep - Re-watch, but considering that the last time I watched it was probably about 20 years ago, and all I could really remember was parts of the ending I might as well have been watching it fresh. Thoroughly enjoyed it, Campbell here is the best he's ever been outside of The Evil Dead franchise. (Amazon)

In a Violent Nature - I didn't really enjoy it. I was thoroughly impressed with it and get what it was trying to do but it left me a bit cold. Still, nice to see something fresh being done with the Slasher genre. (Physical)
Boys From The County Hell - A horror comedy from my own neck of the woods, well Northern Ireland anyway, and it's good and it does our sense of humour without being cringe. Shocking. 

Stopmotion - Recent British horror film about a woman making one of my favourite types of film, creepy stop motion! And it drives her to obsession and madness! Hell yeah! Good show (Shudder)

Images - An old one from Robert Altman. A woman may be in the grip of madness or possibly the victim of an elaborate conspiracy or some supernatural 'tings are going down. Hard to say and either way its a disconcerting experience that uses the edits and cuts to put you in the head of someone who might be loosing it. Good stuff.
El Conde - As you know I like to try and watch a film from each of the habitable continents when I'm doing this. This is from South America, Chile to be exact. Its a darkly funny political satire on the idea that Pinochet was a literal vampire. It's funny enough, the narration from Margret Thatcher is a clever touch. (Netflix)
Manborg - Canadian retro-90s comedy action horror. Same team that did Fathers Day. This was a lot of fun. (Amazon)

Childsplay - This is the 2019 one. I really like this, its a sci-fi about the horrors of AI instead of a questionable Voodoo explanation for the murder-doll. Chucky isn't evil, he just has the safeties off. (Netflix) 
The Purge - Rewatch, chosen by my Sister. I liked it before and it was fine on a rewatch. I like the setting and the premise, could do with watching the whole series but I can't mind which ones I have and haven't seen. (Netflix)

Carrie - Another rewatch, again its been ages so it was fun watching it again. Knowing the ending doesn't make it any less impactful as it all plays out. Also funny watching it now since seeing Phantom Of The Paradise, you can see all of DePalmas stylistic touches, except its not as balls to the wall mental as that film, its all there but paired down and directed. Deserved classic status. (Amazon)

House - Probably the worst horror film to be simply titled "House". Its the American one that was the start of an ongoing series. (Arrow)

Wolf Guy - Now this is more like it, the sort of thing I got the Arrow sub for. Weird Japanese stuff, nonsensical plot, some cool gore effects and tits. I'm easy pleased. (Arrow)
Juju Stories - The token African film for the list. Nigerian Urban-Folk horror anthology. Good stuff, each of the three sections was well executed and the acting and writing were all on point. It's always nice getting a window into another culture. (Amazon Prime)
Over The Garden Wall - Rewatch of this eminently re-watchable animated mini series which can be consumed in 10 minute bites or all at once as a 2-hour ish complete story. It's great. Lots of detail and depth, you get a little more on each rewatch. Every section is a joy in itself. (Amazon Prime)
Hellraiser: Bloodline - I've heard that the Hellraiser sequels from 3 onwards are hard going. This wasn't great but it does some interesting things with the mythos.
Run Rabbit Run - Our trip to the Antipodes of the season. Unoriginal Ozzy spooky-kid movie. (Netflix).
The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures - Another South American price, this time Brazil's Coffin Joe. Neither as horny or as fun as it sounds unfortunately. (Arrow)

The Last Matinee - An international co-production of Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina this time, more recent and much more enjoyable. A killer on the loose in a movie theatre that is showing a slasher film, set in the 80s. Its very meta and has some fun kills. Decent. (Arrow)
DellaMorte DellAmore - This was great. Italian giallo horror comedy-satire. It looks gorgeous and has a great turn from Rupert Everett as a town cemetery employee who has to fight the undead every night. The satire element would probably be more apparent if you know Bava's work like The Beyond but I defy anyone to watch this and not get something out of it. (Amazon Prime)
Madhouse - I don't mind admitting that it was Movie Bob's youtube channel video on this that got me to watch it. This was amazing, dark mystery / horror with Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, its about the horror movie industry which gives them an excuse to do a bit of meta commentary on the genre. Price is amazing as always, this tme playing a version of himself. If you like the old Corman Poe adaptions or Hammer / Amicus etc era British technicolour horror you need to see this. (Physical)
Tales That Witness Madness - Speaking of which, this is an old Amicus anthology film with Donald Pleasence in the framing story. It has a lot of charm. (Recorded from TV)
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane - wasn't sure whether to include this. Its not really a horror film though it does have some touches of horror. The scariest thing in it is Martin Sheen being a nonce to a very young Jodie Foster. Its really good though. Like an episode of Colombo meets We Have Always Lived At the Castle. (Amazon Prime)

Shaun Of the Dead - Rewtach. One of my favourite films ever. Just a stone cold classic of horror comedy. 10/10 no notes. (Netflix)
Queen of The Damned - I wasn't expecting much and thats what I got. Stuart Townsend was a good choice and could have been a great Lestat in a better film. Good for a cheesy Nu metal is Good Actually 00s nostalgia kick. (Physical)
The Platform 2 - loved the first one. This was okay but sort of undoes some of the interesting subversive / radical messaging that the first one had without adding much of interest. (Netflix)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Rewatch, of course. Love it. 10/10 no notes. (Disney+)
Black Rainbow - Supernatural Thriller about a dodgy medium who might actually have other worldly powers, enough to seemingly predict murder. Very well done, the seance scenes were suitably creepy. One of the good finds of this season. (Arrow)
Hocus Pocus 2 - Terrible. Not even a cameo from Omri, like FFS. (Disney+)
Grim Prairie Tales - Rewatch. Western Horror anthology, James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif telling scary campfire tales to each other. It looks like a TV movie, but its fun and the second story has a memorable ending which is worth the price of admission alone. Nice to revisit after nearly 30 years. (Its just on Youtube)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Was intending to see this in a cinema this month but missed out and ended up skinning in with my mum and sister for the stream on Halloween night. I am a huge fan of the original, found it genuinely creepy an unsettling when I was wee. The other people I watched it with really liked it, I wasn't that enamoured with it. Glad I watched it though. (We got it through Prime)

And thats it. I only got to read through one horror novella, Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I've not been reading as much this year. Not a bad selection over all.

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024) A Review

Of all the various genres of contemporary popular culture the superhero origin story feels like the most played out, with the action-revenge thriller not far behind it. So it seems odd that last weeks release Monkey Man, which is decidedly situated in both and playing the tropes of each fairly straight, might be one of the freshest and most exciting releases of the year.

The film is a passion project from the British-South East Asian actor Dev Patel and marks his directorial debut. Some readers may remember him from his start on the TV series Skins as part of the first gen, or from later more prominent roles in Slumdog Millionaire, C.H.A.P.P.I.E. and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series, or my favourite, David Lowery’s Art-House fantasy adaption of The Green Knight. He has definitely done some good work over the years and worked with some of the most interesting directors working at the moment. However as a martial artist since childhood, long before he was interested in acting and fan of action cinema he’d always wanted to be in one of those films, preferably as the lead. Problem was though that the film industry doesn’t tend to see him in that sort of role, and his only way to be in that sort of film would be as “the guy who hacks the mainframe or the comedy side-kick”, unless he made the film himself, which is what Monkey Man is.

 

As much inspired by the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu films, post 2000s South Korean revenge thrillers and The Raid series moreso than anything from the various ‘x’-ywoods of the Indian sub-continent, the film nonetheless wears its status as a product of Indian culture on its sleeve. The titular Monkey is based off of Patel hearing the stories from the Ramayana from his Indian grandfather, specifically that of Hanuman, the Monkey King who assists Rama over the course of the epic, mostly by fighting various gods, mortals and demons with his magic club and martial arts abilities (and yes, if that sounds familiar, this is also widely thought by scholars to be a major inspiration for Sun Wukong, the King Monkey from the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West). 

 

As well as the references to Hindu mythology, authentic Hindi dialogue in some places, the Indian trad elements in the score and OST, and the general aesthetic which does a brilliant job of depicting the modern Indian city as a hellish neon-lit cyberpunk dystopia, it also shows its cultural specificity in the social commentary and messaging. It seems that conscious of this being his first directorial feature and possibly his only, Dev Patel threw every single thing he had at the screen and made sure he said everything he could conceivably want to say, and the top of that list was to stick two middle fingers up at the BJP.

The story of the film concerns a nameless protagonist who infiltrates an exclusive club for the ruling class of a fictional Indian city in order to enact revenge on the corrupt head of Police responsible for the destruction of his village when he was a child. Along the way he tries and initially, fails, succeeding after finding community with other among oppressed to fight not just for his own personal vengeance but for all those dispossessed by the ruling Hinduja elite. The club not-for-nothing is called Kings (the icon styled after a European coronet) in a fairly obvious nod to the Raj and India’s postcolonial status and is full of portraits of the co-opted rulers through which the British exercised control over India. It is full of not just the criminal elites and dirty cops, civil servants and politicians but religious figures, one in particular Baba Shakti who over the course of the film becomes emblematic of how the corruption of the Hindu religious traditions by capital plays into everything.

The story behind the scenes seems to have been as interesting as anything we see in the film itself. The shoot took place during the pandemic and was fraught with practical difficulties and setbacks, including Patel injuring himself several times and running out of money in the middle of production. Even after it was completed getting distribution was a whole other saga. Initially meant to be a Netflix release, they seem to have not reckoned with the political themes and shelved it fearing alienating one of their key markets for distribution. It was eventually picked up thanks to Jordan Peele, who one imagines must have seen an affinity between his own work which explores contemporary political and social issues through a populist genre while also being a solid example of that genre on the black (in both senses of the word) horror comedies Get Out, Us and Nope. Both those things work in its favour, the scrappiness of the production is appropriate for a hard as nails action thriller, that getting a cinematic release and not going straight to streaming is very much appropriate to a movie such in incredible visual sensibility. There is an absolutely gorgeous psychedelic sequence right at the heart of the film that would thoroughly satisfy any fan of Jodorowsky, Russell, Noe or Panos Cosmatos that for my money, as one myself, is worth the door tax on its own.

 

So, if you like action films, prefer them with good politics and you can handle a bit of the old ultra-violence (the 18 cert is exclusively for that, some of which to be fair borders on body-horror) this could well be among your more enjoyable cinematic experiences of the year.