First Time Watches: October 2018

I’m eight months behind on these posts right now, soon to be nine.  That’s why I made a vow to myself to have this one done by the end of the month.  That’s four days away, five if you count today.  Today is mostly gone, though.

Welcome to another in my long line of first time watches posts.  This one will be covering the month of October 2018, which wasn’t too busy a month for my viewing new movies.  I spent most of the month revisiting horror movies that I enjoy watching because it was spooky season.  A few first time watches slipped in.  Seven of them, in fact.  And I’ll be taking a quick look at them.

What kind of movies will I be writing about?  One of them was a new sequel to an old slasher that ignored the other sequels.  One of them was a new twist on a classic teen party game.  There was a comedy special and a western mixed with serial killer horror.  It was as interesting a month as any and it’s about time that we got to the movies.  Don’t you think?

Happy Hunting

The Most Dangerous Game is a theme that comes up repeatedly in horror movies.  People hunting people for game.  The Running Man was about people hunting people.  Surviving the Game was about people hunting people.  An episode of Supernatural featured the idea, and The Purge: Anarchy featured the idea.  Happy Hunting had a small town that took people hostage and forced them to run for their lives while the townspeople tried to hunt them down.  That was interesting for the first few minutes, but people got killed far too quickly to sustain suspense.  The story became about one man’s attempt to escape people who held him hostage, rather than the victims escaping the game.  Some of the action was good and the movie was alright.  It could have been much more, though.  Other versions of the story show that.

Bad Times at the El Royale

As I walked out of the theatre, I didn’t realize that Bad Times at the El Royale was nearly two and a half hours long.  It didn’t feel anywhere near that length.  I was so engrossed in what was happening that I had no idea of the time that had gone by.  The performances were top notch.  Drew Goddard grew from what he had done with Cabin in the Woods to create a world that was just as interesting.  The growth made it so that everything felt like it fit together, where I never got that from Cabin in the Woods.  Add in Chris Hemsworth as a Charles Manson type and you’ve got a tense, exciting crime mystery that hits hard up to and including its final moments.  It should earn a major cult following sometime.

Seven in Heaven

Blumhouse has been on a roll lately, putting out movie after movie that are considered modern horror classics.  They might not always be the top tier of horror, yet they still manage to be fun spooky stories told well.  I turned on Netflix one day to find this new movie from Blumhouse had dropped.  It was a horror take on the seven minutes in heaven game that gets played at teen parties.  Two teens went into the closet for seven minutes, and when they came out, the were in a different dimension.  It was a darker dimension where people were more violent.  They had to fight their way back to their reality.  It was an alright low budget horror movie.  The most memorable thing was that the best friend character, who stayed in the original reality, reminded me a lot of Colin Farrell.  I saw him in another movie a few months later and thought the same thing.

Halloween

Of the three big slasher franchises of the 1980s, the Halloween franchise is probably my favourite.  Things went off the rails for a bit there with The Curse of Michael Myers, Resurrection, and whatever Rob Zombie did, but I still think the franchise is stronger than the other two.  When they announced that a new one would be coming out, I was interested.  I wanted a new Halloween movie.  It ended up being a direct sequel to the first film, ignoring the events of all other sequels, but making references to them.  The cast was good.  The new pieces of score were great.  It was a good time in the theater watching a new slasher film that harkened back to the old ones while still being modern.  And having that trio of women taking on Michael at the end… Loved it.

From Hell to the Wild West

I can’t say I loved this one all that much.  It was a chore to get through.  The story was that Jack the Ripper left England after his series of murders and went to the Wild West where the murders continued.  There was a US Marshall after the killer, as well as a cowboy who looked like Charles Bronson.  It was a poorly made and poorly acted movie.  It was repetitive.  There were some women.  They got half naked and got killed.  Repeat.  Then the Marshall and cowboy would go after the killer.  That was about it.  Not good, not worth watching.

Hellriser

If I didn’t know this was a sequel from looking up some history about the movie, I don’t think it would change anything about the movie.  It felt very standalone, which was good.  Hellriser ended up being a supernatural sort of serial killer procedural.  For what I expected to be a not-so-great movie, it was a solid little cop flick.  I should probably get around to seeing the movie that came before it.  If the sequel was any indicator, I’ll probably like it.

Iliza Shlesinger: Elder Millennial

I’m just going to flat out say that I don’t remember any of the material from this special.  I remember that she would say things and hashtags would flash on screen as if it was Last Week Tonight.  It wasn’t though.  I keep watching her specials and they’re always okay.  There’s nothing great.  They’re just kind of alright and I move on with my life.  It was the same for this one.

And with that, October came to a close.  There were six movies and a comedy special.  For the most part, it was a solid month.  It also helped that I was rewatching things like Final Destination and its sequels, The Exorcist, and Teen Wolf.  I had a good time watching movies, and it was my final binge before getting into making a bunch of short films for school.

November was also a rather slow movie watching month for me.  I was making short films in school most of the month.  Three full weeks of short films and assignments that were due.  That only left enough time for eight first time watches.  They included the Kingsman sequel and Nashville.  That’s all for the next post, though.  That should be coming pretty soon.

Before you go, let’s get a few plugs in here.  You can find me on Twitter here and here.  You can find me on Instagram here and here.  I write about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on this blog, and have been getting posts up fairly regularly lately.  I also write the Sunday “Bad” Movies posts on my other blog.  Aside from me, give my good pal Jaime Burchardt a look.  He’s a good guy who will talk to you about movies.  Especially horror movies.  And finally, there’s Talk Film Society.  They’ve been doing good work for around two years now, I believe.  Check them out.  David Hart recently wrote about Men in Black.  Give that a read.  And then come on back here and read the next post I put up.  I’ll see you then.