{"id":10743,"date":"2017-02-03T13:43:22","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T17:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10743"},"modified":"2017-02-03T14:19:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T18:19:50","slug":"nip-buds-shoot-kids-three-short-horror-movie-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2017\/02\/nip-buds-shoot-kids-three-short-horror-movie-reviews.html","title":{"rendered":"Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids: Three short horror movie reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A little of everything here.<\/p>\n

Left Bank<\/strong><\/em>: Artsy Belgian psychological suspense flick about an injured elite-class runner who starts to doubt her boyfriend\u2019s motives. Slowly shifts into a very different horror genre. I often dislike those genre switches\u2013in theory I approve of them but I often end up wishing I could just see the movie I thought this would be\u2013but here I loved it. Spooky and weird, and it commits to its bizarre worldview. Strong sense of place; hints of misogyny-as-horror (aka men-as-horror\u2026).<\/p>\n

ETA: The main character\u2019s athletic career was handled really well. It doesn\u2019t become heavily symbolic, but she does face what might be a career-ending injury, and the film plays on the sudden new vulnerability of her strong body.<\/p>\n

The Howling V: The Rebirth<\/strong><\/em>. So I really enjoyed The Howling<\/em> (I\u2019ve never seen a bad werewolf movie<\/a>) and when I was a kid I loved leafing through the books in the Waldenbooks at the mall. Some commenter at Kindertrauma<\/a> argued that #V is basically \u201cthe good sequel\u201d and I was in the mood for late\u201980s scream queens of a winter night, so I settled in.<\/p>\n

The Howling V<\/em> is a really above-average back-row makeout movie. The Hungarian castle locations are gorgeous, the snow is very satisfying horror snow, the twist is surprisingly well-foreshadowed in both dialogue and action, and the kills are splashy and well-paced but not too realistic. The dialogue is sometimes clunky (although sometimes great, e.g. \u201cI think he\u2019s saying that the basis of the Christian church is fear.\u201d \u201cOh, but not the American church!\u201d) and the acting is noticeably wooden. Not that you\u2019d care if you were the target audience here, since you\u2019d be too busy making Millennials to notice.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed this utterly skippable hunk of franchise fodder and suggest that if you drink, it would go well with liquored-up cocoa. And a front-hooking bra.<\/p>\n

Battle Royale<\/strong><\/em>: If you are a horror fan you know the premise already, yes? Forty Japanese ninth-graders are shipped to a deserted island and told to kill each other; only one can survive. Child-killin\u2019 from stem to stern, plus implicit generation-gap social commentary.<\/p>\n

And it is that, for sure. But it\u2019s really unnecessarily well-made, from the doom-laden music (this would be great figure-skating music) to the beautiful shots of the island, the waves and the rain. The children are mostly compelling sketches; the ones who won\u2019t fight were depicted especially well, I thought. Toward the end the movie starts breaking the rules it laid down at the beginning, which I never like, and I\u2019m not sure this works as well in retrospect as it does when you\u2019re watching it. But it does the most important thing, which is remembering that a movie of this kind should be sad and not just<\/em> cruel.<\/p>\n

ETA: I initially thought the social commentary here, the mutual fear of children and adults, was odd in a country with such a low birthrate. Those seem like Baby Boomer anxieties, right? If\u2026<\/em> and all that. But the emphasis on the strange smiles of the last girls left alive made me wonder if the more urgent social commentary is the depiction of humans\u2019 longing for the social cohesion that comes through committing violence and\/or facing death together<\/a>\u2013in this case, social cohesion found through<\/em> social division. The search for an identity<\/a>, found through the defeat of those who once were us. That strange, haunting smile\u2026.<\/p>\n

Speaking of killer children\u2026 it\u2019s The Shortening! February, the shortest month, is the time of the Deadly Doll\u2019s<\/strong> annual series honoring small wonders of the horror world. Head over there<\/a> throughout the month for killer kids, killer pets, killer dolls, and many more tiny terrors.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little of everything here. Left Bank: Artsy Belgian psychological suspense flick about an injured elite-class runner who starts to doubt her boyfriend\u2019s motives. Slowly shifts into a very different horror genre. I often dislike those genre switches\u2013in theory I approve of them but I often end up wishing I could just see the movie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[119,125,113],"class_list":["post-10743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-horror","tag-japan","tag-woman-is-the-irony-of-the-community"],"yoast_head":"\nNip the Buds, Shoot the Kids: Three short horror movie reviews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A little of everything here. 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