Mandy is a 2018 action-horror movie, directed by Panos Cosmatos, starring Nicolas Cage, 
Andrea Riseborough, Bill Duke, Ned Dennehy, Linus Roache and Richard Brake. With its vintage visual style reminiscent of old school cinema, the movie has a colorful, but at the same time nostalgic mood, that certainly adds a dense element to its intricate and elaborate visual artistry.    

On this film, Nicolas Cage plays Red Miller, a woodman that is happily married with Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), a cashier in a shop on their nearby neighborhood, and a talented artist on her free time. They live a simple lifestyle in relative isolation in the Shadows Mountain region of California, where peace and quietness are part of daily life. On a certain occasion, Mandy crosses the road when an eccentric group of people in a van is passing by. They are members of a bizarre cult, called Children of the New Dawn. Unbeknownst to her, the leader of the cult, a man named Jeremiah (Linus Roache) asks his right-hand man, Brother Swan (Ned Dennehy) to capture her, as he wants to have her. 

Brother Swan, then, goes along with other cult member to fulfil his task. On arriving in a secret place, he makes a devilish arrangement with a nefarious horde of demonic motorcycle maniacs to kidnap Mandy. The group arrives when Mandy and Miller are sleeping, so Miller is easily subdued, and Mandy is successfully captured. On her captivity, she recognizes an old woman from before, who had earlier bought something on her work place, asking her something about the book she was reading. Mandy is then drugged with the venom of a giant wasp, and afterwards, completely hallucinating, is introduced to Jeremiah. In a delirious journey provoked by the substance administered to her, she begins to laugh hysterically, to Jeremiah’s disappointment.   

Miller is also held captive by the malevolent sect, tough outdoor. After her time with Mandy, Jeremiah goes outside with Brother Swan and one of his female servants, and begins to torment Miller psychologically, eventually stabbing him with a dagger. Then they excruciatingly torture him, by burning Mandy alive in front of him, tough she was involved in a giant fabric bag. On watching Mandy completely burn to death, Miller becomes severely distressed, and an irrepressible fury against the members of the sect strongly resonates on him. 

Strangely, after the event, the group goes away, leaving Miller alive. Completely tied in barbed wire, Miller frees himself with extreme difficulty, injuring himself deeply in the process. He then goes to the place where the ashes of Mindy are, and contemplates its remnants, as what has left of her is rapidly dispersed by the wind. Then he goes home, and sees the TV is still on. Miller goes to bed, and collapses on extreme fatigue. He then dreams of Mandy, shown in an animated sequence completely disfigured by the burns. 

He then wakes up, completely disrupted. He goes to the bathroom, and drinks an alcoholic beverage from a bottle he had hidden. He also starts to overflow all his fury. After recovering a little, Miller decides to visit a friend, Caruthers (Bill Duke), to pick up a weapon. He initially says he will go hunting, and tries to disguise his pain, but eventually he crumbles, and tell his friend what happened. Caruthers then tells him that a criminal gang called Black Skulls are the probable culprits behind the atrocity Miller and his wife have suffered, as they have terrorizing some nearby regions of the country for some time. They drive black motorcycles and can be seen only at night. Their main fuel is a very potent form of LSD they used to deliver, as a service to an independent drug lord. Caruthers tells Miller that he saw the gang once, at safe distance, and informs him the location they are most likely to be. 

Miller then displays all his ability as an ironsmith, to create a giant combat axe to fight his nemesis, and afterwards, drives along in search of the gang. In one occasion, Miller manages to shoot one of them with an arrow, after precisely capturing him through the lens of his gun. Rapidly, he stepped into his van, and drove on where his victim had felt on the road to run over him. Nevertheless, the assailant has managed to stay on his knees in the middle of the pavement, and with a gun shot Miller’s van several times, before a fatal collision between the two took place.  

Miller loses his conscience. When he wakes up, he finds himself imprisoned in a very claustrophobic deposit. His right hand is handcuffed to a pipe, while his left hand is nailed to the ground. Soon, he realizes he is being held captive by one of the Black Skulls. His assailant starts to beat him, talking to him in a very grotesque voice. But Miller manages to subdue his aggressor, breaking the pipe that was indeed a little loose, freeing his right hand, and spanking his antagonist with the pipe until he falls into a lateral pit.  

Miller then starts to explore the place where he is, and suddenly realizes it’s a very underground hideout. He sees an assassinated couple in a bed, and then confronts one of the Black Skulls, that was consuming large quantities of drug in a very dark living room. Miller is able to subdue him, but with great difficulty, as this Black Skull in particular is thoroughly truculent, aggressive and bestial. But Miller kills him by slashing his throat with a razor. The TV then is destroyed by a fire shoot, and Miller confronts again the assailant from before, the one he had thrown into the pit. But once again, Miller is successful in subjugating his attacker. Miller then “celebrates” his victory by consuming a large amount of cocaine that was over a table in the living room.  

On further exploration of the place, Miller encounters his axe. He also accidentally experiments the degraded version of LSD the Black Skulls are addicted to, and have a voraciously and intense delusional acid trip. When he leaves to proceed on his vengeance hunting, he shoots another Black Skull with one arrow, in front of a burning car. The Black Skull doesn’t die, though, and the two begin to fight. After some moments, this member of the gang tells Miller that his wife is still burning. This infuriates Miller, who throws his antagonist directly into the flames and then, in a vicious rampage, decapitates him with his axe. Miller then lights a cigar with the fire in the burning head of the assailant. 

He then drives in the dead of night to continue with his revenge plan, until he sees a tower. He then enters a vast laboratory, where a drug lord (Richard Brake) works. He threatens to catch a Luger pistol to defend himself, but hesitates. There is also in the precinct an enormous tiger named Lizzie in a cage. The drug lord pushes up a button, that opens the gate of the cage where Lizzie is confined, and the animal leaves. With his large pupils dilated, the drug lord also seems to be having a drug-related trip. Anticipating the feeling that Miller is desperate to get information about the Children of the New Dawn, the drug lord tells Miller that they may have gone towards the north. 

Miller then leaves his motor vehicle in a cave, and decides to sleep a little. He then have another dream with Mandy, which is a brief animated sequence, where she is naked, and pulling of the heart of a dead monster. Miller then finds the mountainous region that serves as the new headquarters for the members of the Children of the New Dawn.

Miller begins his irrational fury by viciously attacking Brother Swan, who was leaving his vehicle. Upon the aggression he brutally receives, he manages to say that Mandy has “burned brightly”, scorning Miller by asking him “don’t you think?” – Miller then introduces the sharp lower tip of his axe into the mouth of Brother Swan, breaking his jaw. He then pushes his axe more profoundly, brutally injuring and killing him. The younger woman, a member of the cult, was there, accompanying Brother Swan in the van. She silently cries, but Miller does nothing to her.    

Miller then proceeds to kill other members of the cult. He kills the next by throwing his axe directly into his head. Another one was fought in a battle of chainsaws, although Miller’s antagonist had one whose blade was much longer. Miller manages to inflict a profound wound in his opponent, but this fight proves to him thoroughly difficult to be won. Miller then picks up a chain, and manages to throw it out around the neck of his enemy, pushing it and forcing him to fall over one of the chainsaws – who was on –, that completely eviscerates Miller’s antagonist in the process. 

Miller then finally arrives at the satanic pyramid of the cult, and picks up out of curiosity their “holy” scripture. He then walks through the underground tunnels, finally arriving in an antechamber, where he meets the old matriarch of the cult. She begins to talk to him about Jeremiah. Miller’s only reaction is to stare at her coldly. 

Jeremiah is naked, alone with his egocentric godly delusions in a closed room, when the decapitated head of the matriarch is thrown at his direction. Jeremiah says to Miller that he can’t hurt him, as he continues to proclaim that he is a type of god. When Miller attacks him, Jeremiah starts to beg for his life. But after just a few moments, Jeremiah has a change of heart, and begins to insult Miller, saying that it’s him that should knee, and not the contrary. But Miller says to Jeremiah “I am your god now”, and starts to crush his head, until his eyes pops out, and his skull is brutally smashed. Miller then, feeling at least a little redeemed, sets the place on fire.  

Feeling at least partially relieved, Miller let the good memories related to Mandy flow back. He then drives away, with the sensation of mission accomplished. 

While this movie is good entertainment, it’s not a fantastic, exhilarating nor a superb work of art. More or less, it’s basically a typical revenge for love type of story.

The psychedelic features and the more exotic vibe present in the visual elements are an interesting feature, that certainly adds a genuine and interesting quality into the atmosphere of the movie. They are well developed, and used correctly, not overtly exaggerated throughout the whole production, but applied in precise and effective moments, to increase the effect and to transmit to the audience a correspondent sensation about what a specific character was feeling in a precise given moment. But this component, despite it’s cohesive usefulness on various passages of the movie, does not serve as a guarantee concerning the artistic efficiency of the film.  

Don’t get me wrong. Here there is beautiful cinematography, exceedingly dense and poetic visual scenes, artistic elegance, a consistent narrative, but in the end, Mandy is just a little above the average action flick. Like I wrote some lines above, it’s a very good entertainment. If you like generally reasonable action movies with somewhat generic storylines, you will certainly be pleased with this one. Just keep your expectations low. Don’t expect too much out of it. Yes, you will be thrilled by some really amazing, genuine and colorful exotic scenes. This will be your main reward for risking your time to see this really cool hipster piece. The scenes where Jeremiah delivers an esoteric monologue while his face is entirely red, and his facial features constantly shift to look like Mandy’s are certainly a good exemplar of the colorful unusual imagery that sets the tone of this somewhat relatively audacious vengeance story.

In the end, Mandy is not a bad movie. On the contrary, it’s a very good action flick. It serves to prove that, in the end, Hollywood still manages to do some decently good conventional action sequences. But don’t expect too much out of it. Despite decent visuals, and a plausible conjuncture of good ideas, Mandy will hardly exceed your expectations. In just a few weeks, it will be just another Nicolas Cage movie.           


Wagner

Tad Hilgenbrink is an American former actor, that became famous after starring as Matt Stifler in the 2005 movie American Pie Presents Band Camp. Nevertheless, despite being this movie that threw him into the spotlight, the actor originally from Quincy, Illinois, engraved his presence on the screen for starring in two horror films, 2008 Lost Boys: The Tribe and 2009 The Hills Run Red. 

Although I have seen these three movies, it’s the last – The Hills Run Red – that I remember the best, especially for the fact that I have the DVD, and I have seen this movie a dozen times, because I really appreciate it. It’s not a fantastic movie, however, but it’s definitely my type of horror.   

In The Hills Run Red, Hilgenbrink plays Tyler, a young student that is undergoing a personal project. He wants to do a documentary about an obscure horror movie, titled The Hills Run Red, and the director, Wilson Wyler Concannon (played by William Sadler). The film is considered lost, no copies are known to exist and the director apparently disappeared in mysterious circumstances after the movie was released. Tyler is passionate and enthusiastic about his project, and has located Alexa (played by Sophie Monk), the daughter of Concannon, to dive further into a deep investigation. She is a stripper in a club, and he wants to find her, to discover everything he can about the movie and the director, and why both mysteriously vanished. His girlfriend, Serena (played by the gorgeous and fabulous Janet Montgomery) and his friend Lalo (played by Alex Wyndham) join him in the adventure. 

Tyler locates Alexa, and she strips for him. He lets her know that he doesn’t want her services, he just want to ask her some questions, but she tells him that they better pretend, because they are being watched, and she stares at a discreet camera on the ceiling. She whispers to him, to wait for her outside. Upon finishing her shift, both drive to her place. After acknowledging that she is a drug addict, he locks her and forces her to undergo a hazardous, deliberate and stressful period of abstinence, to fully recover from the drugs and its pernicious effects. At first, she goes furious and insane, but after detoxifying, she became more healthy and reasonable. 

By neglecting his girlfriend, Serena becomes lonely. Perceiving her neediness, Lalo advances towards her, and she accepts his advances. They sleep together, and blame Tyler for his omission, as well as his obsession on the documentary. Regardless, both soon join Tyler and Alexa, and the shooting of the documentary begins. Then the group goes towards the small town where the movie was originally filmed.  





​The premise of the movie basically revolves around a dark character called Babyface, a vicious and sadistic killer. After interviewing local hillbillies – that saw some of the original shooting, as well as the movie when it premiered on a local theater –, that seems friendly at first, but afterwards attack them in their bonfire encampment, threatening to sexually violate the girls, Babyface comes from the darkness, and kills the aggressive hillbillies. The four, feeling threatened, untie and escape from Babyface, seeking refugee towards a cabin in the secluded forest.

Eventually, while running away from Babyface, the group split, but all of them become trapped in different places and situations. After Alexa disappears, Tyler enters the cabin to search for her, and finds her almost naked tied up to a bed. But then Babyface attacks again. Alexa then orders Babyface to go after them.
 
Tyler eventually finds a dark room full of film reels, and he recognizes himself in some of them. After being assaulted and beaten, Tyler loses his conscience, and wakes up tied to a chair, just to see Concannon suddenly joining him, after being misinformed by Alexa that her father had been dead for years. Concannon reveals to Tyler that the movie is still being shot to this day, and that all of the original cast were amateur actors. After seeing some footage, Tyler realizes, to his distress, that all the killing done in the movie was real.

Concannon also shows Tyler footage of himself touching Alexa’s breasts, when the two were confined all alone, during the abstinence crisis that Tyler forced Alexa to undergo. It is then implied that – when Tyler first contacted Alexa – she probably told everything to her father, that managed to plant cameras on Alexa’s nightclub and flat, to continue the shooting of his movie with new victims. Alexa acted as a voluntary bait, to attract them to a trap.   

Concannon wants to do some shooting, with the group being a part of his movie. Lalo is also held imprisoned, but is savagely tortured by Alexa – who has revealed herself to be on her father’s side. Nevertheless, Concannon and Alexa never agree upon anything, argue all the time, and he acts increasingly aggressive towards her, which enrages Babyface. Serena manages to run away for a brief period, hiding in a cellar, and submerging into a barrel of blood. Nevertheless, Babyface, suspecting that she was there, hides in the rooftop, and waits for her to leave. When Babyface eventually locates and captures her, Serena, thinking that Babyface – which has a terribly disfigured face, covered with an equally disturbing and abominable baby mask – is mentally handicapped, sings a lullaby for him. He apparently feels calm at first, but then, with an adult voice, coldly tells her that this won’t do to her any good. She eventually realizes that Babyface’s mental condition is normal, that he is a psychopath, and that she can’t persuade him to let her go unharmed, which makes her go hysteric. 

Meanwhile, Alexa proceeds to torture Lalo, and manages to kill him. Concannon and Alexa then argue about the direction the movie should go, and after feeling jealous about her cinematic virtues, Concannon tells Alexa that he is the only talent in the family, and kills her. Babyface becomes enraged, intervenes, and kills Concannon, with Tyler’s encouragement, Before his execution, Concannon reveals a secret, upon which becomes implicit that Babyface may be the offspring of an incestuous relationship between Concannon and his daughter Alexa. 

Babyface and Tyler then starts to fight. Serena tries to intervene, and manages to subdue Babyface, but Alexa – which was only harmed by her father, and not killed – arranges to subjugate both Serena and Tyler. Alexa ties Tyler to a chair in a room full of dead people, leaving him alone to see her version of the movie. Tyler goes insane. Afterwards, it is revealed that Serena is pregnant, and is being held hostage by Alexa. Only recently I saw the DVD extras, and acknowledged that the movie was shot in Bulgaria. 
  

​
For me, this is the movie that is the pearl on Tad Hilgenbrink’s career. Another movie that highlighted him in a lead role was 2006 The Curiosity of Chance (but I haven’t seen this one). Apparently, the actor was active in the film industry for about five years only, from 2004 to 2009, participating in thirteen movies in this short period. He was never seen again in any other movies, nor TV shows. He is absent from the screen for almost ten years now. What has happened to him?  

He simply disappeared, like the director Wilson Wyler Concannon, from The Hills Run Red. Having become exasperated with acting, he retired from the spotlight and probably just changed occupations. Why not? This would not have been the first time, many other people have done that. Famous actress Kay Panabaker ended her career in 2012, after eleven years in the industry, to work in zoology. Another notorious actress, the beautiful and talented Leelee Sobieski, ended her career in the same year, 2012, after successful seventeen years in the movie industry. Or he may just be taking a break. Actress Alison Lohman stopped acting in 2009, the same year as Hilgenbrink, but returned briefly in 2015, to stop acting again, in the next year. 

Or – who knows – he could have died, and no one noticed. Who really knows, besides people on his personal circle? It would be good to know, out of curiosity. Nevertheless, his brief career was a highlight for horror movies enthusiasts, and although his legacy is modest in quantity, certainly he compensates on the great dramatic quality of his memorable performances.   



Wagner

Cry of the Banshee is a 1970 American / British horror co-production, starring legendary horror icon Vincent Price. With a history set in 16th-century England during the witch-hunt, the plot tells the story of a malevolent and depraved inquisitor, named Edward Whitman (played by Vincent Price), who exhibits a sardonic, hostile and perfidious behavior, in his obsessive and dehumanizing designation of imprisoning, inquiring, and killing anyone suspected of practicing witchcraft or engaging in pagan rituals. Using the most aggressive tools his malicious and cunning character has at his disposition, such as abuse of authority, coercion, violence and cruelty, Whitman diffuses a reign of fear, affliction, and terror, which expands the ignominious pragmatism of his authority over the inhabitants of the village where the history happens, besides intensifying the hatred that the pagan peasants nourish towards him. 

In a cruel twist, as formidable as it is unusual, Whitman ends up getting what he deserves, when he least expects it. An excellent film, whose definition of genre would best qualify as a historical drama with elements of suspense, than actual horror. Nevertheless, definitions aside, Cry of the Banshee is a magnificent, realistic and interesting movie, where the qualities are plentiful, and the deficiencies are practically nonexistent. With a solid and cohesive script, marvelously elaborated in a dense and panoramic plot that explores a difficult, tense and troubled historical context, the film's excellence is crowned with the magnificent presence and lucid interpretation of Vincent Price, one of the greatest icons of horror films in the history of cinema. Interpreting a malevolent, aggressive, self-absorbed, egocentric character – but to some extent articulate and charismatic – the frivolous density of the plot becomes even more consistent by profusely taking advantage of the three-dimensional nuances of well-crafted characters, who definitely understand the period in which the story presents itself, being cohesively compatible with the situations presented. 

A great period film, which vehemently portrays the aggressive and inhuman domain of the inquisition, Cry of the Banshee is undoubtedly indispensable for anyone who appreciates the classics of the genre.


Wagner

The Disappointments Room is a 2016 American supernatural horror film, starred by Kate Beckinsale and written by Wentworth Miller. Kate Beckinsale plays Dana, a woman who moves with her son and her husband to a new house in the countryside, just to discover a hidden room in the place, that is submerged in the mysteries and secrecies of a dark and turbulent traumatic past. 

When Dana and her family move to a new house in a very small provincial town, initially everything went exactly as they wanted. The happiness, joy and excitement of a new life surrounds them, and, although some rooms in the house are in ruins, in need for serious repairs, the family of three is satisfied, and ready to initiate a new chapter in their lives. 

Nonetheless, everything changes when Dana discovers in the attic a mysterious room, which is locked, and she can’t manage to open the door. When she finally finds the key to the mysterious room, which was above the doorframe, Dana enters what appears to be a very large and abandoned empty space. Stricken by intuitive bad thoughts and feelings, Dana becomes eager to discover the real purpose behind the hidden room, so she goes to the town library, and starts doing a full research. With the help of the elder local librarian, she finally discovers that the hidden room in her house was used by its former residents as a disappointments room: a common habit within wealthy and aristocratic families in the past, they used to hide relatives that had some kind of morbid congenital disease or grotesque physical deformity in a secret place within the household, preventing the isolated family member to have any kind of social interaction. This measure was adopted by the family as a means to avoid social shame or shunning, and the secluded relative had completely denied the possibility to have a normal life. Tormented by visions from past events related to the family that has lived in the house several generations ago, Dana starts to feel the suffering inflicted by a mysterious man on an innocent deformed child, that probably was related to him. The visions achieve a climax, when Dana sees the mysterious man killing the deformed child. Suddenly, she starts to feel that a very unwanted and sinister presence is hidden somewhere within the house, putting herself, her husband and her son’s life in danger.   

The Disappointments Room is a movie very difficult to evaluate precisely, because it’s as good as it is bad, having its share of good moments, in the same amount of bad moments as well. Undoubtedly, the story is intriguing. With potential, and a very promising and interesting premise, the overall plotline eventually falls in several tiresome and predictable genre clichés, and sometimes seems to revolve around literally nothing. With very intrinsic dynamics, the movie alternates between very intense and interesting moments, and scenes where literally nothing happens, finishing in extremely obvious plot devices. Almost everything revolves around Dana – Kate Beckinsale’s character –, with everything created to gravitate around her, or towards her. Nonetheless, several elements of the plot are frozen in a very obvious atmosphere, specially her relation concerning the bad things that had happened in the disappointments room, and the visions she has related to it.

In general, The Disappointments Room can be considered just another ghost movie, with a more intriguing and sophisticated plot, that falls into a generic and predictable storyline. Nevertheless, the major flaw of the movie is the fact that it is too short. The entire movie feels like a large and compelling introduction, and when you think that the movie will finally begin, in fact, it abruptly ends. Conclusively, what you really have in this movie is an interesting beginning with a very peculiar premise. But as the movie progresses, the story eventually falls in a series of clichés and obvious plot devices, that in the end turns the movie into something a little less than a total waste of time.
 
The Disappointments Room ended up as a major disappointment, being scorned by critics and audiences alike. The final product is better described as a very interesting premise, wasted in a very ordinary movie. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not completely terrible. If you are an intelligent and lucid spectator, you certainly manage to absorb some fragments of good art here and there. But generally, it doesn’t worth the time. Actor Wentworth Miller, though, is revealing himself a talented screenwriter. He had also scripted Stoker, a far more decent, somber and clever movie, which was released in 2013, starred by Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode. Unlike The Disappointments Room, Stoker is totally worthwhile watching it. 


Wagner

Black Water Vampire is a 2014 Found Footage Horror Film, directed by Evan Tramel. Exceedingly interesting, certainly can be regarded as one of the best in the genre. The plot device follows four friends – two girls, a director and a producer, and two guys, a cameramen and a sound engineer – that heads towards the community of Black Water, Washington, to shoot a documentary about four mysterious murders that occurred in the region, all in mysteriously bizarre, but similar circumstances. For the last four decades, four girls had been found murdered – one every ten years, all killed in the winter solstice – in the woods of Black Water. All the four victims have been found with bite marks on the neck, completely drained of blood and with a mysterious symbol drawn in blood on their skin. One man has been imprisoned, found guilty and convicted for these murders, and he was sentenced to death. Believing he is innocent, the girl leading the group and shooting the documentary wants to discover the truth behind the crimes, and to find the one who is really responsible for them.  

Heading towards their destination, first the group interviews one of the detectives that originally investigated one of the murders. Then they stopped at the penitentiary upon which Raymond Banks (Bill Oberst Jr.), the criminal incarcerated for the murders, is serving his sentence. A sinister figure, with prominent scars on his face, he reveals that he became a scapegoat for the crimes, upon discovering what the villagers where really doing in the woods. Telling the group that he has been slowly poisoned throughout the years, in the hopes of dying faster – and he proves his claims by grabbing a portion of his hair, showing that is easily falling off his head – the convicted individual is mysteriously explicit and ambiguous at the same time, about the bizarre events that for so long had been unfolding in the darkness of the woods in Black Water. 

When they arrive at a cabin upon which they had rented to calmly rest, and keep their baggage and equipment, the next day the group is prepared to enter the woods, and start shooting the documentary. In the first day, they seem to be doing fine, as everything seems to be happening according to the plan. But at night, when they are sleeping on the tent, they hear alarming and unidentifiable screams, becoming fearful that their lives might be in danger. When they leave their tent in the morning, they become terrified on seeing painted in what appears to be blood – in front of the tent –, exactly the same mysterious symbol found painted in blood on the victim’s bodies. 

Determined to go on in their search to find the truth, the group becomes lost in the woods. With the help of a map, they try to figure out where they really are, but rapidly the situation deteriorates, and discussions and misunderstandings broke out between them. Feeling something weird is going on, the sound engineer feels an urge to go back, but the cinematographer encourages him to accompany them further. Telling him that they have walked for almost one day and a half, it would not be easy for him to find his way out of the woods. He says that it’s better for all of them to stay together; soon, the documentary will be shot, and everything will be over in a matter of hours. If he starts to feel bad again, they will completely understand and approve his wish to go back. The sound engineer, upon insisting that he could easily find his way out of the woods, agrees to stay with the group.

But very soon, the situation goes bad again. The sound engineer walks away from the rest of the group, and becomes lost. Several hours pass by, but he doesn’t return. Soon afterwards, the other three are struck by despair, as the night falls, and they haven’t found their friend. The cinematographer and the two girls have a discussion about whether it’s better to search for him, or to set up the tent, sleep, and look out after him in the morning. They eventually chose the last option, which is safer, as they really don’t know what dangers may lurk in the dark, and literally their visibility will be severally compromised by the darkness, turning fruitless any attempt to search for their friend and collaborator in the night. 

But this turns out to be the occasion upon which everything falls apart. Deeper into the night, they hear again the same growls they have heard in the previous night, but these time appears to be louder and closer. They are eventually attacked by a bizarre, dreadful and ferocious creature, that eventually captures the girl that is the leader of the group. The other two, the movie cinematographer and the producer manages to escape, but the producer wants to go back to rescue their friend. The cinematographer strongly objects, and the two wander in the forest, in a desperate attempt to avoid the creature.      

Walking until the day breaks, they eventually find their friend, the girl responsible for the movie project, completely naked and disoriented. She has a terrible bite mark on her neck, and seems to be in shock. The cinematographer puts out of his backpack several clothes for dressing her, and they rapidly try to go out of the woods. But as their friend reveals herself to be in a week and fragile condition, they fail to advance in a fast pace. To make matters worse, they wander completely lost and without any notion of their whereabouts, realizing that leaving the woods will be almost impossible. Soon, they realize that their friend, the girl that has been attacked by the creature, is not only week, but she is experiencing a strange sickness too. She says that she feels an unexplainable thing inside her, and on grabbing up her blouse, she shows up her belly, and is clearly possible to see something moving beneath her skin. In a rage of despair fuelled by his survival instinct, the cinematographer screams with the two girls, saying that he will leave them, but after just a few moments, he is surprised and killed by the mysterious creature, at broad daylight. The two girls, shocked by the killing, do their best trying to escape.

As the night falls again, they see the mysterious symbol – the one that appeared in the bodies of the four murdered girls, and that was also drawn at the entrance of their tent – drawn apparently in blood in several trees surrounding them. They manage to encounter a strange and ruined cabin, upon which they hide. But soon the creature locates them, and they are forced to leave the cabin. Soon the girls are outdoors, and they see a lot of the townsfolk people surrounding them, but their hostile faces make pretty obvious that their intention is not to help. The producer tries to escape, but is killed in the process. The only surviving member of the group, the girl attacked by the creature, is thrown in the floor by the group of stalkers, and they strongly hold her into the ground. She soon starts to scream, and appears to be giving birth, as one woman that was part of the group of deranged stalkers, off camera, seems to be doing the work of delivering the baby. 

Soon, one year later, we see a group of people gathering in the dark, inside of a cabin, celebrating with a cake the birthday of one year of a baby. They are all the same community members seen before, that killed the producer girl, and delivered the baby of the girl impregnated by the Black Water creature. We see here the woman that rented the cabin for the group of filmmakers in the beginning of the movie, and we see, with an extremely unhappy face, the girl that wanted to shot the documentary, the only surviving member of the fatal ordeal that victimized her three friends. She was impregnated by the mysterious creature, with the blessing and the collusion of the townspeople, and apparently, is now a member of their community. The film ends showing the hybrid baby creature, half-human and half-monster.

For a found footage film, Black Water Vampire is simply amazing. Doing the best to avoid and to escape the clichés of the genre, this is a serious work, with a truly genuine and unexpected cinematic feeling. One of the best movies of the genre that I have seen, Black Water Vampire is filled by an atrocious atmosphere of the unknown, that really captures, evaluates and explores the validity of a deep sense of undeniable anguish throughout its entire run. At first, as suggested by the title, you may think that this is just another boring and ordinary vampire movie. But we should never judge a movie by its title, the same way we should never judge a book by its cover. Black Water Vampire manages to be an intelligent mindset of unrestrained, embracing and sensible captivity of surreal – but exponentially realistic – horror. The movie slowly builds on its deleterious urge a sinister, malevolent, fearful and lucid atmosphere of agony and affliction, as you delve deeper and deeper into the mysterious secrecies of a forest that you soon perceive to be held by a hostile and malevolent force, that doesn’t want anybody to wander on its premises. 

Although the overall center of the plot is simple, and the formula upon which the movie unfolds is typical of the found footage genre, the atmosphere upon which the story reveals itself relies on a sinister background that manages to be not just genuine, but authentic and functional, slowly increasing, and showcasing its potential, as the movie progresses. The fear generated by the danger that subtlety reveals itself within the story is exceptionally grotesque, and as the danger becomes more plausible and palpable, the agony becomes more evident, lacerating and hurtful, to the point that you almost see yourself as part of the story, wandering what could you do to possibly get out of the forest alive.  

Evidently, Black Water Vampire is a lot similar to several other found footage films, in instances like structure, style and the unfolding of events. But here, you have a cohesive story, intelligent movie making devices, decent technical skills, a salutary and well-elaborated plot, and a coherent and credible acting, as well as a lot of other qualities. Nonetheless, they are inserted so subtlety, that if you’re not really paying attention to the movie, you will probably miss some of the details that, combined altogether, managed to make this movie superior from other movies of the genre. Although the story unfolds calmly, it has the ability of slowly involving you in a wider spectacle of affliction and apprehension, that becomes deeper and deeper as the movie progresses, to the point where you firmly believe that you don’t have any more the opportunity to escape.   

Don’t get me wrong. You may not be surprised at all at first, but if you really see this movie, appreciating it in the calmness it deserves, you will positively be captured by the genuine atmosphere of horror that this film wonderfully creates, and more marvelously, liberates towards its audience. 

As typical for the genre, the movie is shot by the perspective of their participants, with the four main actors taking turns in recording the images (although the actual scenes were obviously recorded by a professional cinematographer), so you mostly see only three of them at a time, and less, as they begin to disappear. Departing from the prerogative of an adventurous endeavor, they leave for their destination towards an atrocious fate, upon which there would be no return. An excellent movie, despite its simple premise and common ground rhetoric that at first seems to be equal to other movies of the genre, Black Water Vampire certainly can be regarded as one of the best found footage films ever made.                               

       
 Wagner

Meat is an infamous YouTube Channel, which has attracted a lot of controversy and attention in recent times. It was a mysterious channel, with a lot of disturbing, dark and distressing videos, seemingly random and purposeless. Inhospitable landscapes, women caught alone in desert places and disturbing repetitive imagery were some of the things captured on the videos. To this day, nobody knows who managed the account, and a lot of speculations could be read on the section comments for every video downloaded on the channel, with the opinions going to both extremes: while some people wrote that this was only a person with a lot of time available doing some videos to please himself – while laughing a lot when reading the absurd comments people wrote on his channel –, others speculated that this was a vicious, insane and highly intelligent serial killer, that was actually recording on camera desolate places to dispose bodies, registering landscapes with highly disturbing resonant sounds in the background, shooting images of dark and sinister interiors and recording people in the open, whilst he was hidden behind trees or bushes, possibly preparing himself to attack. Scary, isn’t it? But who knows the truth, besides the owner of the controversial channel? Probably, nobody else. 

Well, there is, undoubtedly, several channels a lot scarier than Meat, but while some of the videos were a lot softer than the urban legends created behind every single one of them, what used to be even scarier than what the videos were showing, was the things not appearing on the screen: if you really paid attention to the ambience, the sound, the background images, the landscape and all the adjacent information in every single video, you would certainly guess the person recording this certainly was doing a lot of things one is supposed not to do. But this was just the beginning of a wide range of speculations, not just on my part, but on the behalf of every single person that saw the videos, drowning deeply into the dark side of the mind behind the recorded images. Okay, perhaps it was just my imagination, taking too seriously the things I saw.

While doing some research myself (yes, I like playing the detective sometimes, probably the result of reading too much Arthur Conan Doyle in the past), I’ve collected enough evidence, which says that this individual is probably Canadian. Well, I have never been into Canada, so how could I know, right?   

Well, a lot of the landscapes, buildings and sites in his videos are typically Canadian, with some residents correctly identifying at least some of those places and sites in the video comments. One viewer correctly identified one of these as the Victory Soya Mills Silos, an abandoned facility in the vicinity of Toronto. Another loose set of references points out Canada as his area of activity as well, but you have to be very attentive to find this out. In one of these videos, it was possible to see a sign written in two languages, French and English, which are the two main languages of Canada.     

Well certainly, a lot of the things we write and think about this individual and the videos uploaded on the channel were a matter of pure speculation, and a lot of these same speculations helped a lot to inflate the internet urban legend on which the Meat Channel built its reputation. Probably this is nothing more than a work of a bored individual, that doesn’t know what to do in his spare time. At least, I hope this is the case.  

As my desire to show you this grew, unexpectedly, for no apparent reason,   unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see) the owner of the channel deleted all videos some months ago, except one, a video upon which he explains – in a written message – why he decided to erase all the videos. Also, we may be talking not of a male person, but a female one. If you take a look into the Facebook and Twitter account of Meat – yes, he (or she), had both [if it was not deleted as well], the name given in the context possibly points out to a female person, not a male one. But of course, this person – whatever the sex gender may be – can be deliberately trying to fool us. It can be a prank, like a lot of the things we see on the internet these days. 

In the end, I think Meat probably would remain being one of those dark internet mysteries to remain unsolved. I can only hope seriously that this is just a dark prank, from a bored – and very smart – aristocratic student, with a penchant for dark humor, from a very expensive college in nearby Toronto, with a lot of time in his hands, than the more dramatic rumors that the more drastic Meat fans have speculated about. Well, unfortunately, there are a lot of demented maniacs and serial killers out there, and some of them are cleverer, more than what we could possibly like to admit… and maybe one of these insane individuals was the mastermind behind Meat, recording and uploading his videos on YouTube until recently, while laughing hysterically about how he was easily getting away with murder, while showing through his YouTube channel little pieces and fragments of his illicit activities. Very dark and psychotic, right? Sincerely, I don’t even like to think about it, but let’s face it… there is always the possibility! Well, while his videos were ambiguous enough to let us point out innumerous interpretations – from the most terrible and sadistic ones to the more plausible and naïve probabilities –, one thing is certain: it doesn’t matter trying to speculate. Whatever the truth may be, we will simply never know.    


​Wagner

Well, being home alone, for most people, means liberty, freedom, happiness, the chance to finally hear out loud the music you want to, to see that really cool television show that only you like it, and do whatever pleases you the most, until the parents, the roommate, the wife or the husband gets home, which means that the fun you had, when you were totally alone, is gone for good. 

Well, being alone means fun, right? Well, not always! Let’s remember that very good horror movies make useful the pretext of being alone, to do a very cohesive and scary fearful story. Movies like When a Stanger Calls and Mischief Night are perfect examples on why being home alone is not always a very good situation, and how what appears to be a chance to finally feel on your own could turn into a very dreadful and deadliest situation, as fast as the blink of an eye.

Of course, for a situation like this to be scary, you have to add the elements that disrupts the tranquility of the ambient, like the night, strange noises, and, of course –
the main component – a pervasive and dangerous assailant, which means that you will regret the decision of a quiet solitary night, in the comfort of your house.

Experience a situation like these in real life can be really frightening. Can you imagine hearing things outside, look at the window, and see nothing? And suddenly hear the slow and cautious walk of an intruder, and have that feeling, that you know something is very, very wrong? And have to hide under your bed, or inside the closet, praying for the intruder not to find you?

Well, while this kind of situation is very unwanted and potentially dangerous in real life, they really do very nice and frightening horror stories and movies. And they appeal to us in such a high intensity because it could happen to any one of us. The tension and the fear built in the air is especially painful just because you don’t know who exactly is the person trespassing, what it is the main motive behind the intrusion, what the intruder will really do (steal? rape? kidnap? kill? all of these options?), and if you have enough physical strength to overcome him, and possibly escape alive well, or not. And in the right mood, in the correct pace and in the proper tension, this kind of story can be scary, more than we could possibly imagine.    

Well, for your fun, the video below has 10 scary stories, that will make you think twice, the next time you’re about to be home alone. But you have to listen to them completely on your own, in the dead of night, in the darkness of your bedroom. Otherwise, it will have no effect. Everybody is brave and courageous with other people at broad daylight, but completely alone, in the darkness of the dawn… well, that’s when you really see if you are brave enough… or not!      

I know that Jack Torrance is the main character of Stephen King’s The Shining, but today’s talk is about another Jack Torrance: a freaking and terrifying YouTube channel. Jack Torrance – whose name was obviously inspired by the aforementioned character – is a creepy and sinister YouTube channel that has a lot of found footage videos, some of them terrifyingly creepy, dark and disturbing.

The channel claims these videos are all real, and that they were found at an estate sale, near Austin, Texas. Now, the person who runs the channel is digitalizing all those videos, to upload it on YouTube.   

Some videos are really creepy and disturbing. Apparently all of them decoded, they are usually very short and sinister. In less than half an hour you can see them all. The two minute video Found Footage Super 8 Reel 13.49585.76: Fragment 86t shows what appears to be a person in a dark place, with a flashlight. The individual enters an elevator, and suddenly, passing ahead of this person, there is a dark, unrecognizable figure, and breathing in fear and agony, the person who is filming the video goes to the panel of the elevator, and try to push the buttons to another floor, in an attempt to escape whatever the dangers the mysterious figure could possibly inflict. A very vague reflex of this person can be seen in the elevator door. When this person reaches another floor, after a few steps, an acute noise is heard, and the video suddenly finishes. 

    The almost sepia forty three seconds video Found Footage Super 8 Reel 97.16521.61: Fragment 5s, shows disrupted images of a girl playing, when, in the end, what appears to be a thin, long cryptid arm with enormous, giant fingernails, goes towards the little girl. The thirty seconds Found Footage Super 8 Reel 45.876.78: Fragment 87t, although it has a very unclear image, shows someone inside some place sinister. After opening a creaking door, the person sees the frightening figure of a long-haired dark apparition in a rocking chair, and then the person shooting the video tries to escape.   

The one minute and a half video Found Footage Super 8 Reel 15.656.9: Fragment 5b it is one of the most mysterious and disturbing videos of the channel. It is set in a creepy place, with a lot of bizarre objects. You can see skulls, old photographs, a demonic mask hanging from a wall, a strange hand-like chandelier, and a fox mask, encircled by candles burning, in what appears to be the place of a ritual. Afterwards, you will see a mysterious unidentified object, and a shadow embracing it, that suddenly disappears (obviously, through editing), and someone with a bizarre, horrible mask comes along, in front of the camera, for the rest of the video. 

The Found Footage Super 8 Reel 10.4566.26: Fragment 44X shows a very nervous and anxious person, breathing deeply in affliction, investigating a dark place. When he (assuming that it is, indeed, a male person) opens up a curtain, we see a dead corpse (again, assuming that it is one, the image is very dark and distorted), and the person apparently panics, and a strange noise suddenly disrupts over the video. If you freeze the image in a proper time in the one minute and five seconds Found Footage VHS Cassette 031 Fragment 25n video, you can see what appears to be a demonic figure slowly appearing behind some clothes in a wardrobe. You can freeze the image several times throughout the video, and caught the demon in different positions, as it is moving forward, pushing away the clothes. It has gigantic hands, and a very large, ugly face.   

Not all videos are interesting: some of them have just ordinary images, or dull sequences. But most of them are intriguing, to say the least. Of course, this could be just a hoax, given the fact that practically all videos have, very conveniently, distorted, vague and unclear images, to give the impression that they are old. At least, the product of antique film reels, or Betamax format, like it is explained, in the channel description. Despite being curious, the channel failed to attract attention from a lot of the more mainstream web mystery solvers. Some of them probably think that the channel simply doesn’t worth their time. But the question here is: these videos are authentic, or not? At least, some of them could be real? What do you think? Could we solve the mystery behind the channel Jack Torrance someday?

Personally, I think it is a very cool, but somewhat misleading and pretentious hoax. Certainly, from the perspective of someone who analyzed some of the creepiest and sinister YouTube channels, I think Jack Torrance is more like an entertaining, funny joke. Sure there are some cool videos, but a lot of things simply don’t match. To make fake videos nowadays is so easy, especially if you have the correct technological paraphernalia… if you own a Macintosh, a good digital camera, and really knows how to handle movie programs, to shot this kind of video, and set all the arrangements to give it a dark and old style impression is easy beyond any possibility… but we have to recognize the creativity – at least in some of the more well finished videos – of whoever it is behind this project. Despite being an inferior enigma, especially if compared to the more sinister YouTube channels, in my personal evaluation Jack Torrance remains being a very interesting YouTube mystery, that deserves, at least, a little attention. 


​Wagner

Sweet Home is a 2015 bilingual Spanish horror/ thriller film, directed by Rafa Martínez, and starring Ingrid García Jonsson and Bruno Sevilla. The story follows a couple, imprisoned in an abandoned derelict building, fighting for their lives against a group of brutal criminals, looking to kill them both.

The movie tells the story of a night in the life of Alicia (García Jonsson), a civil inspector, responsible for the state of preservation of home buildings in urban areas. One afternoon, after one routine inspection, she accidentally grabs the keys of an abandoned apartment, and decides to keep it for the weekend, as she sees the location as the perfect place for a surprise party, to celebrate her boyfriend’s birthday. 

After blindfolding her boyfriend Simon (Sevilla), she leads both to the unsuspected location for a romantic night, as a couple, in the abandoned apartment. After a good start, they discuss, and after separating just for a little while, Alicia notices there are more people in the place, which – with the possible exception of one old man who refuses to leave, whose apartment was inspected by her earlier that day – should be empty. 

After being noticed, Alicia is successful in escaping the criminals, but her boyfriend doesn’t have the same luck. After a fight ensues, he manages to escape, just to be caught and stabbed by one of the assailants. When Alicia by chance locates her boyfriend, she manages to help him, and he successfully kills his offender. When both reduce the entire gang to simply one man, they think that escaping alive would be easy, but when reinforcement arrives in the person of one professional sadistic killer, things become really terrifying for the couple, especially when she uncovers the fact that this men were probably all hired by the real state agency, to kill the few remaining residents of the building – mostly aged and solitary people – to demolish the structure, and build a whole new set of luxury and expensive flats. 

The end, painstakingly aggressive and exceedingly surprising, will simply make you jump from the couch. And you will certainly have the desire to see this movie again.   

With great moments from the very beginning to the last final seconds, Sweet Home is a terrific movie, with absolutely no faults at all! Great acting, dramatic moments, agonizing tensions, fearful scenes, afflictive downturns and an amazing soundtrack are all greatly combined, working splendidly altogether, with the final result being this fantastic and superb masterpiece.
The script, decent, cohesive, well-structured, realistic and abrasive, it is beyond convincing: its dark undertones are extremely grounded in real possibilities, with the timing and the correct unrolling of events being a major highlight, completely favorable to the plot, having an almost perfect mathematical set of sequences.   

There are no complaints about this movie. With excellent actors doing their best, an impeccable set of technical proficiency – with special mentions to its refined cinematography and a very lucid photography, responsible for its bright artistic visuals – terrifying scenario, correct timing and pace, everything possible in this movie is beyond compliment; in fact, all compliments in the world still wouldn’t do justice to the professional level of artistic excellence this movie easily achieves.  

With a great history of filmmaking, Spain rarely gives us bad movies. Fortunately for us, this artistic legacy continues to this day. With such a groundbreaking excellence, having executed brightly such a common concept, Sweet Home is a first class movie that certainly deserves one hundred stars, or more, but since I can give to it only five, it is five stars indeed. But it remains being just a few, since it deserves a lot more.   



​Wagner

Agoraphobia is a 2015 supernatural horror movie, written, directed and produced by Lou Simon, starring Cassie Scerbo. In the film, Scerbo plays Faye, an agoraphobic woman, who returns to the house of her childhood, in a desperate measure to overcome her disorder, soon to discover that, apparently, the house is being haunted by a supernatural entity.

Well, unfortunately, from the beginning, the movie is a total disaster. The acting sometimes, becomes so artificial, that the actors in general give the impression to simply spit up their lines, in a much trained sequence, without any emotion or credible tension, just for the sake of obligation. At times, the scenes become so conventionally picturesque and cartoonish, that resembles more a British afternoon soap opera, than an actual horror movie. And soon you pick yourself up just wandering “why the hell in this world am I watching this movie?” Well… do yourself a favor, and don’t!

Although the lead actress deliver a performance that is – at least, for a movie of this category – somewhat decent, the plot doesn’t have nothing in its favor. Very common ground and ordinary, what is really happening, Faye discovers near the end of the movie, is that her husband and her best friend are having an affair, and both are planning to put her in a psychiatric institution, to take full control of her vast inheritance. They somewhat take advantage of her psychiatric condition, to deliberately execute tricks and deceits against her. As a result, she becomes really disturbed, giving to others the impression that she is losing her mind, becoming delusional and insane. As soon as Faye discovers their plan, they decide to kill her. Nonetheless, the house is indeed inhabited by a ghost – of Faye’s deceased mother – that was seeking to reveal to her daughter the dangers she was facing, in the risk of the conspiracy, on which she was the victim. In the end, the spirit of her mother is what saves her life.

Besides the mediocre plot, that is not what the movie has at its worst; things are slow, at times it seems more like a family melodrama, than a real horror movie, and the acting are very unforgivably dull and mechanic. The fact that the entire movie develops completely indoors (of course, she’s agoraphobic) is another major cause of monotony (lacks movement in the structure of the plot). With the possible exception of the performance delivered by Cassie Scerbo, that is quite convincing – and at times, it seems the work of a professional actress [which is quite an achievement, given the below the average performance skills from the rest of the cast] –, the movie is superbly monotonous, and boring beyond imagination. A very low class average low budget B-movie, highly generic, that really doesn’t worth your time.  Nonetheless, I have learned to appreciate the positive points that even this kind of movie has to offer: in this case, a very good photography – in a very classic style, for the genre – and a somewhat intriguing lead character, facing a rather peculiar condition, in a very unusual situation. But the movie doesn’t have anything more to offer, so it is very poor, especially in terms of plot, acting performance, originality and intellectual sophistication. One star and a half does the rating for this movie, quite well.                

​Wagner