Saturday, January 23, 2016
Adventure time/Horror movie mash up art!
Found this on the @UnusualHorror on InstaGram and I'm kind of in love with it so I thought I'd share :)
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Last Shift (2014)
One of the first lines of this film is "Mom its fine,
most cops go their entire career without seeing any action" How foreboding
is that? Directed by Anthony DiBlasi, Last shift is about Jessica Loren(played
by Julianna Harkavay(walking dead fans would know her as Alisha) who is
starting her very first night shift as a rookie cop, and boy do things start
off weird. She enters this sterile police department and finds...no one. As she
calls out she finds police sergeant Coen, played by a grizzled Hank Stone, who
screams at her to turn around suddenly (What a great way to introduce
yourself!) They discuss the new department, and Coen informs her that she has
the privilege of working the last night shift in the old police department
before it shuts down for good(can anyone say Five Nights at Freddie's?!) Her job: from 8 pm to 6 am she has
to guard the seemingly empty and eerily quiet building and she can't, repeat cannot,
leave until then.
Things start off slow, reading turns to sleep, and then a
strange call comes in. A girl asking for help wakes up the young rookie. (Who’s
forgotten what Coen said, that all the emergency calls were being rerouted to
the new department. Spoooooky!) Everything in the department, all the
rooms, the halls, the ceilings are bright white with giant florescent lights
which emphasizes how empty this giant building is, and how alone our
protagonist is.
After hearing a knock on the front door, Officer Loren goes
outside to investigate and finds nothing. When she turns around to go inside,
she finds a grizzled and dirty man who appears either to not notice her asking
him to GTFO or just doesn't care. But the real question here is: how did this
man get inside in the first place? Considering that she closed and locked the
door behind her.
Strange noises, echoes from the old pipes, sound like
arthritic bones crackling and create a real sense of unease and a good deal of
suspense. As she explores through the vacant rooms and hallways, things move on
their own, doors open suddenly(and in unison), heavy shelves sway impossibly,
all when she's not looking, and she continues to receive calls from the distressed
girl. Things really hit the fan when she discovers that the back door
broken open and her police radio begins to play children's music.
About Halfway through the film she's joined by officer Ryan
Price(played by actor insert here) who comes to check on her and tells her
about “the wannabe Manson family”, a religious cult that killed Jessica’s
police officer father, but nothing is at it seems in this mindfuck of film. As
music and sound bounce off the white walls, yells of people, singing girls, and
masked individuals appearing and disappearing just in the periphery, out of the
corner of the eye, the viewer is left asking: Is she going crazy? Is this all
in her mind?
Disappointments: why do cops never fire their weapons in
movies? Or call for back up? Why is that not a thing?! Also, if your phone
rings and it’s a dead parent that usually means your speaking to a demon/ghost
thing. I mean, come on.
Diblasi makes amazing use of camera angels and lighting, (or
the sudden lack of lighting) to put the viewer through the ringer and back. The
echoey soundtrack and rhythmic bass tones help the tension to rise until it's
almost too much. It has amazing gore and practical effects, some excellent
cinematography, a perfectly moody soundtrack and had just the right about of
jump scares. This is a really scary and well done horror film. It’s
definitely worth your time.
Overall, I give this flick 4.5 out of 5
-Leslie Rae
Hi, my name is Leslie Rae and I should be doing math homework, but I'm not (obviously.) Last year was kinda utter shit for me. 2015 didn't treat me kindly. My shitty ex broke up with me the day before valentine's day(like a real winner), I dropped out of school, moved back in with my parents and lost my grandfather a week before Christmas. It was a bad year over all(although there were some highlights, I'm looking at you Mel, Tahni and Neil.) This year I've decided that I've had enough with the shitty times, I'm done with them, shitty times are boring and I just dont feel like doing that anymore, so I've decided that while I'm going back to school(hence math homework) and work on getting my GPA up I might as well doing something productive in regards to something I'm passionate about, maybe it'll help point me in the right direction.
So I sat down and wrote out a list of things I love. Origami came up, as did corgis, baking, crafts, etc etc... but I circled back to the first on my list: movies, specifically horror movies.
I LOVE horror movies. I've loved horror movies since I was eight years old and I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) while home sick from school. I remember the feeling of bile rise to my throat as Freddy stretched out his arms so wide he could scrap the metal fences with his gnarly clawed hands as he chased Tina through her nightmare. I remember being amazed as Freddy dragged her all around the ceiling of her bedroom with some wire work that, to this day, still looks soooo realistic. I remember these scenes and more, but most of all I remember feeling a beautiful mixture of terrified and absolutely excited! The feeling of experiencing Tina's fear while knowing deep down, that I was safe at home, was intoxicating, and eventually turned into an addiction.
Every time my parents and I went to the blockbuster a few blocks away(that's an old sentence, like a great uncle talking about the wild days of radio, but I digress) I would run to the horror section and look at the dvd/vhs covers. Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Shinning, Autopsy, Night of the Living Dead... I would beg my parents, "Please, this looks so gooooooooooood!!!! Please, I know its rated R but but but...pleeeeeeeeeease." My mom almost never budged on this, it was PG13 fares for me. My dad on the other hand... he was a rebel. He grew up watching World War 2 footage on cable TV,"no horror movie was as bad as war", was his thought process. But my friends could hardly ever make it through the films I choose. "Cant we watch A Nightmare Before Christmas?". "But... its made by Tim Burton" was all I ever said in reply.
When I got to the 8th grade I met Caroline. No longer was I alone in my love of horror movies. Friday and Saturday nights were spent in movie theaters, watching the latest PG 13 flicks, and occasionally a Rated R film if her dad felt like taking us. We watched Silent Hill, The Grudge, The Ring, The Village, The Ring 2, Dark Water, The Omen (remake), and soooo many more. Caroline always had a love of Asian culture(especially Japanese culture) so all our sleep overs were spent watching the original Japanese films all our favorite american horror films were copying at the time(a very big trend in early 2000's horror you'll notice). It was amazing. Even my friends that didn't like horror still loved me enough to watch horror with me. My wonderful friend Suzanne(now married and mother) watched MANY horror movies with me that nearly made the two of us ill(Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake effected our 15 year old sensitive stomachs rather harshly) and I can honestly saw that I've never dated anyone who hasn't liked horror. Its a large part of my life, to say the least.
But enough of my rambling!! Its time to get down to business! This is my horror blog, I will be using this blog to discuss all things horror. It'll probably be mostly horror film reviews, maybe some horror book reviews, I'll be reposting horror fan art I see online, and prehaps some updates on horror movies in development and stuff like that. I'm gunna try my hardest to make this fun and interesting(with the fewest grammatical errors as possible.)
So I sat down and wrote out a list of things I love. Origami came up, as did corgis, baking, crafts, etc etc... but I circled back to the first on my list: movies, specifically horror movies.
I LOVE horror movies. I've loved horror movies since I was eight years old and I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) while home sick from school. I remember the feeling of bile rise to my throat as Freddy stretched out his arms so wide he could scrap the metal fences with his gnarly clawed hands as he chased Tina through her nightmare. I remember being amazed as Freddy dragged her all around the ceiling of her bedroom with some wire work that, to this day, still looks soooo realistic. I remember these scenes and more, but most of all I remember feeling a beautiful mixture of terrified and absolutely excited! The feeling of experiencing Tina's fear while knowing deep down, that I was safe at home, was intoxicating, and eventually turned into an addiction.
Every time my parents and I went to the blockbuster a few blocks away(that's an old sentence, like a great uncle talking about the wild days of radio, but I digress) I would run to the horror section and look at the dvd/vhs covers. Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Shinning, Autopsy, Night of the Living Dead... I would beg my parents, "Please, this looks so gooooooooooood!!!! Please, I know its rated R but but but...pleeeeeeeeeease." My mom almost never budged on this, it was PG13 fares for me. My dad on the other hand... he was a rebel. He grew up watching World War 2 footage on cable TV,"no horror movie was as bad as war", was his thought process. But my friends could hardly ever make it through the films I choose. "Cant we watch A Nightmare Before Christmas?". "But... its made by Tim Burton" was all I ever said in reply.
When I got to the 8th grade I met Caroline. No longer was I alone in my love of horror movies. Friday and Saturday nights were spent in movie theaters, watching the latest PG 13 flicks, and occasionally a Rated R film if her dad felt like taking us. We watched Silent Hill, The Grudge, The Ring, The Village, The Ring 2, Dark Water, The Omen (remake), and soooo many more. Caroline always had a love of Asian culture(especially Japanese culture) so all our sleep overs were spent watching the original Japanese films all our favorite american horror films were copying at the time(a very big trend in early 2000's horror you'll notice). It was amazing. Even my friends that didn't like horror still loved me enough to watch horror with me. My wonderful friend Suzanne(now married and mother) watched MANY horror movies with me that nearly made the two of us ill(Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake effected our 15 year old sensitive stomachs rather harshly) and I can honestly saw that I've never dated anyone who hasn't liked horror. Its a large part of my life, to say the least.
But enough of my rambling!! Its time to get down to business! This is my horror blog, I will be using this blog to discuss all things horror. It'll probably be mostly horror film reviews, maybe some horror book reviews, I'll be reposting horror fan art I see online, and prehaps some updates on horror movies in development and stuff like that. I'm gunna try my hardest to make this fun and interesting(with the fewest grammatical errors as possible.)
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