Unseen Terror 2018: Day 7

In the old west, two travelers happen upon each other. One is on his way to meet with his wife for a romantic reunion, while the other is a bounty hunter carrying a body so that he may reap the $2,000 reward that has been put out. To pass the time, the men decide to try and one up another with eerie tales.



I apologize that today's review may be rather short. I'm still under the weather, and have two lengthy overnight shifts scheduled at my store, of which will likely leave me temporarily exhausted. Still, I refuse to fall behind this year, and given how quick of a watch this one is, I'm not letting any roadblocks stop me just yet.


Grim Prairie Tales can be summarized in one breath: Darth Vader and Chucky sit around a fire and regale one another with mediocre horror fables that make those found in Are You Afraid of the Dark? look frightening in comparison. It's actually a damn shame that this picture isn't about Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones, because their interactions and exchanges of dialogue are so friggin' great. I'm of the mindset that thinks it's utterly bizarre to see the former play a "straight" man in ANY picture, while the latter has been made up to look somewhat unrecognizable (though his booming voice is nigh impossible to disguise). They're making the best of lines that most performers could never deliver without sounding utterly ridiculous, and god bless both of them for it.


As fun as the narrative may be, the "tales" themselves are remarkably dull. Our first one, which boils down to Native Americans getting revenge on an evil white guy, feels like something that would be submitted for a short film festival and forgotten about the next day. Number two revolves around a random man assisting a seemingly pregnant woman, and sports the most peculiar (and "WTF"-worthy) twist of the pack. The third is probably the most interesting and mature, but that's only because it has no supernatural ties and is focused on someone being forced into participating in a lynch mob. Our final segment, where a gunslinger believes he is being haunted by someone he previously shot, has a ton of potential (and an actor who is dead ringer for Tim Roth), but feels very rushed and ends with a bit of a whimper.


In the world of horror anthologies, Grim Prairie Tales is among the weakest. Despite a small handful of fun moments and some great chemistry between Jones and Dourif, it just doesn't have enough pizazz to warrant an immediate viewing. Hopefully someone will just cut all of the scenes involving the two most well-known performers into one short film on YouTube, so that you can otherwise avoid this entirely. As it stands, there is no legal way to obtain this collection, and unless you feel like spending a good chunk of change on a VHS tape, you are likely going to have to visit a bootleg booth at your local convention like I did (shoutout yet again to the VHSPS guys).



Tomorrow, I feel as though we're owed a solid slasher flick. So, let's stay outside and set up camp, shall we?

The Conjuring (2013) Review

In 1971, married couple Carolyn and Roger Perron move into a new home in Rhode Island. Along with their five daughters, the family settle in well enough on the first day, but things go sour rather quickly. Several strange instances occur which lead the family to believe that the residence may be haunted by spirits, and they make the decision to contact paranormal researchers Ed & Lorraine Warren for help.

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, but the state of paranormal horror films is in a bit of a conundrum at the moment. It seems like the reliance upon cheap scares has replaced good tension, characters have been getting progressively stupider and harder to relate to, and the insistency to crowbar in scenes of extreme violence from time to time seems rather unnecessary. I'm not going to name specific pictures (as I'm still adhering to my promise from the last review I did), but you can guess what I'm referring to. Add to that my mixed feelings on director James Wan's body of work prior to the release of The Conjuring, and you can understand why I may have been cautious of a viewing that would cost more than a single dollar or two. I never thought he had a proper understanding of what makes a truly scary ghost story.

I, however, would like to present my hat to Mr. Wan, before I promptly eat it. Or something like that.

Perhaps what really drove me to like this picture as much as I did is in relation to the paragraph above. The film does so much with so little, and I think Mr. Wan may be slowly turning into an honest-to-god good horror filmmaker. The scares in The Conjuring are very much based in the old ghost and demonic stories from back in the glory days of horror. I could spot nods to films like The Exorcist and The Changeling fairly easily, but most of what makes this film work isn't just similarities, but simple things like camera work, proper place of music, and a story that, while somewhat predictable in what is sure to come, still keeps your eyes glued to the screen and creeps you out more than most films released in theaters.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have good chemistry with one another, and if you had told me they were based on a real-life couple, you could have genuinely shocked me. The fact that this case is "based on" true events does merit some investigation, but I'm willing to throw my skepticism to the side and just try to enjoy the film. I honestly couldn't recognize Ron Livingston at first, given that I haven't seen him in anything of note in at least.......five years? Perhaps even more, if you don't count straight-to-DVD pictures. It pains me to say that he was the weakest link in the cast, though it may be unfair considering his tormented wife is excellently played by Lily Taylor, and he suffers in comparison to her. It is easy to get somewhat lost by the fact that this couple has five daughters, and alas, not all of them receive an equal amount of screen time. True, this was the case of the story behind the film, but I'd personally sacrifice one or two underdeveloped daughters in favor of one that had more character.

The Conjuring's body count is shockingly low, as is the actual blood that is shed throughout its near two hour running time (why this earned an "R" rating is baffling to me), but the sign of true strength in a horror film, especially one that deals with the subjects brought up here, is that you don't need those in order to create great atmosphere and in order to scare the audience and make them jump. There's even a scene midway through the picture that answers the age old question of "Why don't you just move out of the haunted area?," something which has always drove me a little bonkers. Sadly, a large portion of the story's more interesting developments were spoiled by its own trailers, so if you have seen little-to-nothing in terms of promotion for this film, that may benefit your viewing experience.

I know a lot of people were very high on Wan's Insidious, but I believe this blows it out of the water in every way, shape, and form. Though Evil Dead still holds the spot for my personal favorite horror film released in 2013 (so far), I may have more respect for The Conjuring, solely because of being able to not just make a known hater of "Ghost Investigation" material like me intrigued by a case that is over forty years old, but for attempting to remind audiences of when and why these stories have frightened many generations' worth of human beings.