I know that by randomly picking movies off Netflix to watch for Spook Fest 2011 I’m going to run across some real stinkers.  I had never heard of Carriers but I figured it would be a pretty bad low-budget thing.

Surprisingly, this movie that nobody ever heard of and nobody ever saw was actually pretty respectable.  It’s got some famous people in it too…  I mean, it’s got mofo’ing James Tiberius Kirk for starters.  This is the closest any movie has gotten to achieving my 3 minutes old dream of having Star Fleet fight a planet of zombies.

But actually there are no zombies in this movie.  It’s just a disease that’s spread through contact with sick people.  Which clearly would wipe out the entire human race.  I mean, it’s not like people infected with a disease that’s transmitted this way would be immediately quarantined from the general population.  I like these post-apocalyptic tales though so it gets a pass.  All that’s left are a few bands of survivors who must scrounge for any supplies they can from each other.  And by scrounge I mean take by extreme force.

It’s also got Elliot from Law & Order SVU, but there’s nary a murdered prostitute in sight.  He gets to be the overprotective father of an infected child.  I guess you can’t blame the guy for being protective but I think sometimes Christopher Meloni is just a bit too intense.

And so you get to see the small band of survivors take advantage of this guy and his sick daughter, but of course the kid  is going to cough on one of them and make them regret ever crossing their path.  Of course.  Captain Kirk should have known from his days fighting Klingons:

“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”  Also, it is best served pre-emptively.

So not only do they get to deal with this disease, they end up driving their stolen car directly into another movie, 28 Days Later, where they run into the crazy military types who want to kill the guys and have their way with the group’s women.  I mean, it’s literally the exact same idea.

Sure, at first they’re all concerned that OH NOES, THEY HAS TEH GERMS, DON’T TOUCH ME…. and then like 3 seconds later their penises kick in and are like “dude, I don’t even care, we need to hit that.”

While this actual disease isn’t all that interesting (it basically gives you a rash and you cough. oh and i guess you die)… the movie does do a good job of making you care about the characters.  I honestly think Chris Pine was awesome in this movie, playing the tough older brother who tries to stay positive on the surface but in reality the conflict and horror of what he’s seen and done is ever present.

Despite being a movie I’d never heard about and just randomly picked on Netflix, I was pretty impressed with Carriers, and you should check it out.  Just don’t let any sick children touch you on the way to the couch.

3.5 pumpkins out of 5

Carriers on Amazon | Carriers on Netflix

I had heard that In the Mouth of Madness was a good, scary film… and I guess I mostly agree with this, as the movie had its fair share of spooky moments.  Basically it’s the story of John Trent (played by Sam Neil shortly after he played the paleontologist in Jurassic Park) as an insurance guy who is checking the claim of a book publisher.  Sounds thrilling!

Basically this publisher has this writer named Sutter Cane (who is clearly based on Stephen King… I mean they even mention King in the movie) and he goes missing after writing his latest book.

So Trent goes and investigates it, trying to track down where Cane was.  It takes him to some small New England town (another King staple) where shit is going down.  It has the old grandma from Happy Gilmore as the psycho hotel manager, so you know things are serious.

The whole film is mostly a series of flashbacks and often times they’ll be repeated over and over, with perhaps a little difference to show just how crazy things are getting in Sam Neil’s head.  But there are some pretty dang scary moments too.  Like, he’ll wake up from a scary nightmare… and you’ll be all like “whew, glad that’s over” and they’ll hit you with a “FOOLED YOU, STILL DREAMING SUCKAS!” and have some horrible looking monster start screaming.

This film also presents one of the greatest arguments for contraception.

Overall, In the Mouth of Madness was pretty decent, but was confusing.  I probably need to watch it a time or two more to really grasp why some of the scenes were there and what they mean.  It reminds me of Alan Wake (which probably means Alan Wake ripped it off considering the game was released like 15 years later).  But if confusing movies that are very meta aren’t your thing, this won’t be for you.

3 pumpkins out of 5

In the Mouth of Madness on Amazon | In the Mouth of Madness on Netflix

For the first movie of the inaugural Spook Fest we watched Hellraiser.  I’m trying to pick out some films that I somehow have never seen, and this series is one of them.  When it was new, back in 1987, I was entirely too much of a wimp to watch anything remotely scary (I was like 6!), so I went into this movie not knowing a thing about it other than that it has Pinhead as the main villain.

Well it turns out even that isn’t entirely true, but in any case, Hellraiser turned out to be quite a fun movie.  If you too haven’t managed to see this before, basically it’s about a guy who accidentally summoned some demons by opening a puzzle box, and his attempt to return to Earth after  being torn apart in hell for a few years.  Returning to Earth though means he needs to suck the blood out of various innocent people, and needs a whole pile of victims.

The plot is sort of dumb, and I found myself early on rooting for the demons.  But where this movie really shines is the special effects, which are good even today (and must have been tremendous at the time they were new).  Instead of loads of CGI filling every scene like you’d see in a movie today, back in 1987 they had to use puppets, costumes, latex and lots of fake blood and gore.  It made for a messy, slimey, goopy, gorefest, but was a lot of fun to watch.

The demons (I guess technically they are Cenobites) have some interesting looks, such as Chatterer (who I call the Teeth Dude) who is seriously gonna suffer from dry mouth:

or Butterball who looks a lot like Cee-Lo Green.

Wikipedia says they are making a reboot of Hellraiser, and I can only assume that long gone will be the special effects that made the original great, to be replaced with CG.  I’ll stick with the classic!

4 pumpkins out of 5

Hellraiser on Amazon | Hellraiser on Netflix