The Bride Wore Red

Film: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

I love a good subgenre, the more obscure or personal, the better. When I say I love a good subgenre, I’m including things like “zombie” of course, but I’m really talking about subgenres that are more about finding connections between movies that are otherwise unrelated. “Good for her!” is one such subgenre—movies where the female protagonist overcomes something terrible. It includes movies as diverse as Swallow and Happy-Go-Lucky. One of my current favorite subgenres like this is “Samara Weaving covered in blood.” Based on that, you should realize that we are talking about Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (which I will be referring to as Ready or Not 2 from this point forward).

There is no way to discuss this movie without discussing the original film. So, while I’m not going to offer up any spoilers for this movie I am necessarily going to have to at least mention important plot points from the original Ready or Not. If you don’t want that movie spoiled, you should stop reading at the end of this paragraph. Or, just skip the next two paragraphs—I’ll keep the spoilers limited to that.

The Real Dracula's Daughter

Film: Abigail
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

Sometimes, you see a trailer and you know you’re going to watch the movie in question. That was certainly the case with Abigail, a movie that ruins the big surprise in the trailer, and demonstrates that it ultimately doesn’t matter. To be fair, the big reveal in Abigail doesn’t happen at the end of the film, but is the driving force of the second act, so it’s not that much of a loss. So, I’m going to naturally talk about that reveal. Since it’s something that literally shows up in the trailer, this is not going to be anything like a spoiler.

As the film begins, we see a young girl performing ballet. Meanwhile, there is a group of people who are clearly planning something and that something is clearly kidnapping the girl. It all goes off without a hitch. The team of six kidnappers takes the girl to a huge secluded house with the plans to wait for a day for what will be a huge payout of millions for each person. All of this comes from the direction of a man named Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito).

Sixth Time's a Charm

Film: Scream VI
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s entirely possible that my position on the Scream franchise should be taken with a grain of salt. If you think that’s because I don’t like the franchise, you’d be wrong. In fact, I think it’s far and away the best slasher franchise ever created. The reason that you might want to take that at face value is that I’m not a tremendous fan of slashers. I just don’t find them that interesting, so my opinion one which ones are the best isn’t going to carry as much water as it would if I were a die-hard fan. I was pleased that Scream VI was available at a local library, though, and snapped it up as soon as I saw it.

The joy, or one of the joys, of the Scream franchise is that it’s always about something more than just the movie’s plot. There’s always a meta-aspect to the film. Scream was about slasher movies; the sequel was about sequels and the third movie was about trilogies. The fourth Scream was about remakes and the follow-up to that was about reboots. Now, with the sixth film, we get a film about franchises. That means that throughout the course of the film, we’re going to play with, confirm, and subvert the expectations of slasher franchises as we once again dive into the world that features the Ghostface Killer.

Ten Days of Terror!: Scream (2022)

Film: Scream (2022) (Scream 5)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I have to say that I was skeptical going into the 2022 Scream. I was annoyed that they decided to call it Scream as if it were a reboot of the series rather than what it essentially is: Scream 5. But, that’s part of the genius of the series. Scream et al. has always been about the meta commentary and about its own self-awareness. The films have, in turn, commented on the nature of the slasher, sequels, trilogies, remakes, and now in the fifth installment, reboots.

I was also concerned that it would suffer from no longer having Wes Craven at the helm. Craven is my favorite pure horror director, hands-down (Guillermo del Toro if we’re talking all movies from someone horror-aligned, but…). But he lost control of some of his series and he made some bombs. Most horror franchises go off the rails at some point—there are some deep, deep lows in the franchises of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and other franchises considered classics (consider just how bad The Exorcist II: The Heretic really is, especially compared with the first film). But Scream, under the care of Craven, never went off the rails. Series low point, Scream 3 is better than a lot of mid-points of other storied franchises. But how would it be without him at the helm?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Film: Ready or Not
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

A lot of people recommended Ready or Not to me, so when I saw it on the New Arrival shelf at one of the local libraries I use, I figured I should grab it. I’m not surprised that this library had it; they have a fantastic movie collection, something well north of 5000 discs. I go at least once a week just to see what new has arrived.

Ready or Not is classified as a horror-comedy and it sort of is. It’s definitely a horror movie and it very much has some comedic elements, but there are parts of this that are absolutely deadly serious. There’s also a specific moment in this that is—without guts, grue, or hitting any of my specific triggers—one of the most stomach-turning moments I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. This is not a complaint. It’s just a statement of fact.

Be Kind, Rewind

Film: V/H/S
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on The New Portable.

It’s time to dive head-first into that most horror-y of subgenres, the anthology film. V/H/S came out in 2012 to something like fanfare, at least in terms of horror anthologies. Truthfully, horror is one of the only genres where the anthology works at all, and really this is true only because it’s not that hard to get a good scare worked up in a few minutes. That said, the problems that other genres have with anthologies are still suffered by horror movies. There’s not enough build-up to really care about the characters, which means that deeper emotional levels are difficult to achieve. With horror, that means we’re going for the gross out rather than real terror most of the time, and I’m just not that interested.

Of course we’re going to have a framing story here. In this case, our frame is a group of guys who go out and commit a variety of crimes and film themselves doing so, and then sell the tapes of their work. These crimes include petty vandalism and a series of sexual assaults on women in parking lots. When the film starts, we learn they have been offered a large sum of money to break into a particular house and steal a specific video tape. When they arrive, they find a dead man sitting in front of a collection of televisions and a huge set of unmarked V/H/S tapes. And, of course, things are going to go downhill from here.