NoWo600Wo: Week 2 of modern horror with a CW actor vs. older, better horror
Week 2 of the ongoing Friday night series at my house: Crappy newer horror movie starring a current or former actors from the CW network vs. an older and surprisingly good horror/slasher film. I don’t know if I would call this a “series” in all honestly, just two weeks of coincidences.
Boogeyman (2005)
This was the second outing of Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert’s Ghost House Pictures after the wildly successful and fairly entertaining remake of The Grudge in late 2004. Boogeyman is the opposite of entertaining however. If anything, it’s proof that perhaps that Eric Kripke’s talent has improved over the past 4 or 5 years. He co-wrote Boogeyman and is the creator and frequent collaborator on Supernatural, a series that has gotten better over time. The Kripke motif’s displayed in Boogeyman are that the main character drives a classic car and has a doomed girlfriend named Jessica. Boogeyman is a dull film that uses flashy and stylish camera tricks just to wake you out of your boredom. The tale is pretty basic: a man (Barry Watson, formerly of 7th Heaven) who is haunted by a Boogeyman that apparently killed his father when he was 8 and tore apart his family returns to his still-haunted house after his mother’s death. There is no tension to be found in this movie, so it is really hard to care what happens. The final battle is so distractingly CGI and tips it’s hat so much to the final battle of Evil Dead 2 that all it makes you think is “You know what’s a good movie? Evil Dead 2.”
The House on Sorority Row (1983)
Out of the three slasher films I’ve seen that takes place in a sorority house, The House on Sorority Row ranks a solid #2 after the original Black Christmas. Sorority House Massacre would be third. The House on Sorority Row almost seems like a sequel to Black Christmas, since the killer also is hidden and resides in the attic of a house full of doomed sorority sisters. While the killer remains shrouded in mystery for much of the film, unlike Black Christmas, he is revealed at one point. A group of graduating sorority sisters decides to throw a party in their house, disobeying their troubled house mother. A prank on the housemother goes horribly awry, and the girls don’t particularly have fun at their party as a result. What’s kind of interesting about this movie is that the obvious final girl, Kate, has a blind date pursuing her thoughout the entire film, but she obviously doesn’t care about him because she has other, more important things on her mind, (like why her friends are disappearing), and there is no romantic angle to the story. He ends up drunk and sitting in his car, which is humorously realistic. Seriously, the romantic angle between Laurie Strode and that cute EMT guy who slips in a puddle of blood in Halloween 2 was more pursued (and abruptly dropped) than the story of Kate and the blind date.
Fun fact: Bad girl Vicki is played by soap opera stalwart Eileen Davidson.
Fun fact #2: The housemother in the upcoming remake will be played by Carrie Fisher. Even if I don’t totally see Carrie Fisher as a housemother type, she will likely be the best part of the movie.
