31 Days of Horror (2024) - Week 1
Experiencing Horror Films for the First Time Daily All October!
Day 1 – Uzumaki (2000)
I think I might have been easier on this film knowing that it was done before the manga was completed. The manga of Uzumaki is fantastic, the movie, not so much. While I think the film captures the look and feel of the manga nicely and even attempts to blend several stories together so they’re happening concurrently (in the manga every story happens one after another), it ultimately fails by not really having an ending it’s moving toward. The film resolves a couple of storylines from the manga, but a number are left unresolved and the ending just feels abrupt and random, like they couldn’t figure out a way to end the film.
Day 2 – In a Violent Nature (2024)
This one was fun. What feels like an arthouse version of one of the many Friday the 13th knockoffs of the early 80s, this perfectly captures all the hallmarks of those films (masked killer, dumb teens, a character who supposedly killed them in a previous entry, a campfire tale about the killer, hilariously gory kills), the big difference this film makes from those others is presenting it without any music, often letting ambient sounds carry the picture. This sometimes works great, other times I was wishing it would hurry up (but I tend to be a pretty impatient viewer/reader generally). The ending was also hilarious in retrospect, but in the moment, I just kept wondering why it was dragging out so long. I’d recommend this to fans of those early 80s slashers who want something a little different.
Day 3 – Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (1995)
This was interesting. I enjoyed it for what it was (a super cheap Japanese knockoff of The Evil Dead), but more than my enjoyment for the film, I was just generally impressed by the persistence of the filmmaker. This is a guy who tried to make the film in 1995 on Super8 and had to reshoot a ton of stuff, but was broke and it took him another 14 years to get the film finished! Crazy. But I can always respect that DIY approach to horror since that’s literally where I started my filmmaking journey in Junior High doing my own Evil Dead rip-off.
Day 4 – Fatal Games (1984)
This was pretty hilariously bad. Just the way I love my early 80s slashers. While there’s nothing too memorable about a killer who likes to impale their victims with a javelin, the idea of a slasher set at a high school with Olympic hopefuls was at least something I hadn’t seen before.
Day 5 – Pulse (2001)
This was pretty great. I probably need to watch it again to fully appreciate it since the copy I saw online wasn’t the best looking, but I really loved the concept of this. It was funny having just finished Keith Rosson’s Fever House the same day as I watched this, because the concept of watching an apocalypse slowly unfold in front of you has always been a cool idea to me. It’s often more popular to just have characters wake up when the world had ended or even start the story amid the chaos, but this was one where as the characters attempted to solve the central mystery of this internet ghost that appeared to be killing people, they slowly begin to realize there’s no way to stop something like this. By 2001, everyone was plugged into the internet. Trying to fight that is like trying to fight the current of a river.
Also I can’t be the only one to find it funny that one of two female leads in this, Koyuki, was also the lead actress in The Last Samurai, which also starred Ring’s Hiroyuki Sanada in a prominent role. Perhaps Tom Cruise was a fan of J-Horror? LOL.