Berlow’s Freak Show

1408 was real fright fest. For a movie about a guy stuck in a room, it was pretty scary. I like the line when the Samuel Jackson character says “It’s an Evil Fucking Room!”. I’ve had one of the most frightening experiences of my life in a New York City hotel room* not unlike the one portrayed in the movie, so I can relate. There is something fucking evil about some hotel rooms, especially the ones in New York City. You have to keep watching to find out if the guy makes it, but I won’t give it away and tell you if he does or not. However the ending is appropriate.

The beginning sort of pokes fun at the “horror industry” in an interesting way, too. Speaking about the horror industry, the big local horror convention Horrorfind Weekend is this weekend. They moved it from Baltimore to DC, though. If anyone wants to share gas, shoot me an e-mail at romarkin AT gmail DOT com. I’m going on Saturday. One day is enough for me, I don’t need a whole fucking weekend, thanks.

*And I’ve never talked about it with anyone. It’s my secret.

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So far I’ve seen three movies named “Joshua”, which is a great name for a movie, for obvious reasons. Two of them were horror and one was sappy Christian. I couldn’t even sit through the sappy Christian one. The first horror was a low-budget flick by Fangoria, which I think is a horror magazine. It wasn’t very memorable, and I really don’t remember it. But this latest “Joshua” is good enough to earn such a good name. The kid named “Joshua” is very creepy. He gets away with murder, because who would suspect a little boy? Strangely I saw this just after another flick about a boy around the same age, “Birth“. “Birth” handled the reincarnation thing in a different way than “Audrey Rose”, and gives us a way to explain how the kid knows what he knows. But I’m getting off track here, aren’t I? This is supposed to be about “Joshua”! Anyway, Joshua was a good horror flick. No gore, but suspenseful and creepy. Worth seeing. The way the kid’s parents are portrayed is interesting, especially the clueless yuppie father. The yuppie father’s life is hell even before the kid starts acting out, but the kid is the final straw.

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Warning: Spoilers!

Mildly interesting vampire movie. It’s hard to do a good vampire movie, there’s been so many variations on it. This one was OK, not great, but OK. The vampires were interesting- they have their own weird look and language- but more could’ve been done with them. What we get is these feral vampires going around killing people, and people running away. No thinking necessary. Where are the vampires from? Why are there so many of them? What’s with their weird language? Near Dark did the same thing, but did it better. However, I smell sequel. If this movie garners any box office, we’ll get sequels in which some of the questions raised by this movie are answered. Even Night Junkies was better than this flick. If these vampires did a bit more than scream and moan, it would’ve been better. We only get one line in the entire movie where we’re told something about the vampires, and that’s when the leader says that they’ve spent centuries getting humans to believe that vampires don’t really exist, that they’re all just bad dreams. The problem is, if a couple dozen vampires show up and waste an entire town, it would be hard to keep it a secret. Yeah so they burn the town down- you’d still think there’d be plenty of weird forensics around to give the ball game away. The idea of having them attack Barrow Alaska is mildly interesting- Barrow has “30 Days of Night” during which the sun doesn’t rise, it’s so far north. That was convincing. I mean, I hate cold weather and seeing all this snow fly around made me feel cold. So the vampires can run around all day and night long, because the sun doesn’t come up. OK- so what? And then, Josh Hartnet injects himself with Vampire blood, to make himself a vampire- that just wasn’t believable at all. He spends the whole movie fighting vampires and then becomes one? Sorry. Not the best plot twist IMHO.

This movie is mildly diverting, and if you have to see every vampire movie (it’s a sickness) then you’ll have to see this one too.

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