I was getting anxious when until Tuesday night, there seemed to be only 1 new movie released on Wednesday (a South Korean movie featuring highly popular group with large fan base). But turned out there was indeed another movie released yesterday, albeit a horror one. My wife who was not a fan of horror movie decided to accompany me to see this one. So how was the movie? Will tell you more below.
Brief Story Line
Set in the year 1968, a group of teenagers that consisted of Stella (Zoe Colletti - Skin etc), Chuck (Austin Zajur), Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and their new found friend Ramon (Michael Garza) went to a supposedly haunted house during the Halloween night while being chased by the school bully Tommy (Austin Abrams). Inside the house, they somehow found a book that seemed to be written by Sarah Bellows, the one that was said to be haunting the house.
Unbeknownst to them, the book seemed to be having dark power as the stories told in it would become reality in a scary and dangerous way. So what would happen to Stella and friends and what was the real story behind Sarah Bellows? Find them all in this fun and sometimes scary horror movie.
End of Brief Story Line
After seeing this movie, I felt that it had a unique premise where the horror arouse not only from supernatural beings but also from the various horror stories people feared the most. Obviously when the things they feared appeared, it was scary for us audience as well. There were few times which most of us got surprised by the jump scares scenes and feeling the suspense while waiting for those scenes to appear. My wife as usual was one of the persons who screamed during those scenes.
However, despite being a horror movie, there were also some parts where we could enjoy the movie without being too frightened or having bone chilling moments. There were some light and fun moments which made this film not entirely scary like other supernatural horror movies. Especially with the main characters who were mostly outcast teenagers and set during the time when everything was still so simple and certain technology have not been around yet, like mobile phones or internet. It was fun to see they still use walkie talkie or going to library. Kind of reminded me of Stranger Things TV series. Credits have to be given to the settings and costume department for making the feel of 1960s very strong.
Another thing that made this interesting was actually the cast. Despite having mostly unknown faces for me, they did their job nicely. Apart from the several main leads, there were also other smaller roles played by more familiar persons to us, like the Police chief Turner (Gil Bellows - Ally McBeal TV series) and Stella's father (Dean Norris). There was also a brief appearance of a quite established actress Lorraine Toussaint (Crossing Jordan, Orange is the New Black TV series etc).
For a horror movie, this one had another aspect that I thought was quite wonderful, like the make up effects and some good special effects, especially the one involving Ramon. The sound effects were not spectacular but adequate enough to provide us with some scary elements, especially with the loud noise in certain scenes and the rather spooky music. To my surprise, this one had quite long duration of 108 minutes. My wife and I waited until the closing credits finished but it did not have any mid or post end credit scenes. Although prior to the ending, we got a hint that this might be a start of a new franchise (providing of course the movie is successful enough). I was actually a bit surprised when I found out it was based on short horror stories for children (with same title, written by Alvin Schwartz), especially since I thought some of the horror were not really suitable for children. Btw, there were also 2 more books in the series, so plenty of stories to tell in future should they really want to make a sequel.
Overall I thought that this movie was quite fun and entertaining with unique premise. I loved the main characters who were quite the "underdog" and obviously the few horrifying moments. The mystery revealing was done pretty nicely and with wonderfully created settings, made this a quite enjoyable movie for me and my wife, even if it was probably not scary enough for hard core fans of horror genre. Before I forgot, there was the name of Guillermo del Toro (director of films such as Mimic, Hellboy, Crimson Peak and producer of movies like Don't be Afraid of the Dark, Pacific Rim etc) who served as one of the producers. He was actually one of the reason my wife was interested in seeing this movie. So if you are interested in this kind of horror movie, then give this a try. But if you prefer to see supernatural horror movies focusing on possession and so on, this might not really satisfy you. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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