The Possession (2012)

I watched The Possession this week, it was made in 2012 and is a story about a family who have broken up and the two girls spend time with their mum and their father separately. There is a strange part at the beginning which has a woman thrown around a house by some invisible force. In the room there is a wooden box.
One day the girls are with their father and are at a yard sale of belongings from the woman's house and one of them is the box, which seems to call out to the younger of the girls. She wants to buy it and her father allows it. However, there was a strange sequence in which the young girl holding the box walks a little bit away from the sale on her own and the old woman who is in a nursing home sees her through the window and even though she is in bed and all bandaged up she screams at the girl and bangs on the window.
So, this is a story about possession. The interesting aspect is that the possession in question is by a dybbuk which is a dislocated spirit that wants to take over the body of another person.
I think it's well made and is a good film. There are some parts that are genuinely creepy. It is worth a watch and comes recommended.

Terror (1978)

Ok so I'm always a little excited to watch British horror films from the 70s. When the titles came on I got even more excited when I saw that Glynis Barber was in this film, I remember she played a beautiful blonde detective in the series Dempsey and Makepeace and she played Soolin in my favourite sci fi tv show Blake's 7.
Sadly, the film Terror from 1978 doesn't live up to the film's title. It employs a lot of good actors but the script is so poor its laughable. There are a few minutes of a topless exotic dancer thrown in for no good reason and one character runs a film studio where the worst software porn movie ever made is being filmed. The porn film is apparently being produced by just a single camera operator who is also the director. The scenes jump from urban streets in one cut to windy, wet, wild woods in the next cut. It's just meaningless, I could go on but it is so bad. And worst of all, it is not scary. There are a few bloody scenes but even these are poorly handled. I can't think of anything in the film that would lead me to recommend it. Not even beautiful Glynis Barber's presence redeems it, sadly.

Exit Humanity

I watched the film Exit Humanity this week, it took me several sessions to finish it. I didn't feel compelled to watch it all in one or two sessions, I think it took me four sessions. The film does organise itself into several chapters, the chapters of the main characters journal as he goes through a zombie nightmare at around the time of the American Civil War.
I felt the story was too long and not enough was happening in it. I didn't really like any of the characters in the story. The zombies were slow moving (like the film) and the bad guy wasn't developed well enough to really care if he was defeated or not.
There was a lot of groaning and wailing and shouting but not a lot of action.

Reykjavik Wale Watching Massacre

I watched this film expectantly this week, Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is in it for a short while. He was born in Reykjavik apparently.
I thought the film started fairly decently but then it sort of went downhill as I could see it was becoming a more typical slasher style film. The special effects in the kills are quite good, one guy is harpooned in the water. The other members of the party become less and less likeable. I don't really understand why but the characters behaviours suddenly became unbelievable and the film decended into a sort of satire of itself. I felt it was a bit of a waste and that there was something worth exploring in some of the characters, rather than simply killing them off.
I would watch it again for a bit of fun but its not the film I thought it might have been.

Lovely Molly

I saw this film this weekend and have to say my low expectations were completely unfounded. I think it was because I had seen two so so films that didn't do anything for me. This film is a good one. It was made, apparently, by Eduardo Snachez who was one of the makers of the Blair Witch Project.
Lovely Molly follows a young couple who move into a big house that turns out to be the Molly's family home after the death of her father some time before, it's not quite clear how many years have passed since the father died. There is no mother mentioned, unusually.
So Molly and her partner move in and we learn that her partner are not a wealthy pair, he is away a lot driving trucks and she is a cleaner. She is very pretty for a cleaner and should have gone into modelling instead! Anyway, I was reminded a little bit of The Entity while watching the film. Something about Molly being attacked physically by a supernatural entity we learn is her father. She has a sister, who tries to help. What's interesting is that Molly seems to have had a drug problem in the past. The sister doesn't help this because on Molly's birthday she gives her some marijuana.
So, as Molly's behaviour gets weirder her partner and sister both suspect she is using drugs again. It gives the story an interesting angle. I really thought there were very good touches in this film, I'd argue touches of genius. I rate this film very highly, it is creepy. Exactly what I want from a horror film.

Laid To Rest

I watched this film this week. I found it a very frustrating film mainly due to the main female character. I just found her really annoying, she couldn't remember anything and insisted on taking the most stupid course of action at most turns. There is a killer character that is central to the plot (if you can call it that), who wears a chrome skull mask, which is completely unexplained. So many frustrating things about this. It is a slasher movie that seems to string together a series of set pieces at frequent enough intervals but really I found it quite bizarre. At one point a young nerdy man who tries to help them contacts the police department by emailing them. So, there are touches of humour in this film but ultimately it's not a good film and not really worth it in the end.

Haunted (aka It's In The Blood)

Last week I watched this film. It tells the story of a family ripped apart by tragedy. It's a story told in the present and in the memories or flashbacks of the father and the son who are the main characters. October is the son's name and he has returned to his father who remained at the family home as the sheriff. I wasn't sure which country it was supposed to be set in, I thought it might be Australia but it could be any back woods small provincial place.
The father and son go for a trip into the woods to shoot a rifle and have a bonding session. October learns to drive the car and shoot. He seems to have been studying medicine as well. However, the nature of the tragedy and lack of communication between them since it happened doesn't make it an easy time. The father thinks he sees something in the woods and fires his gun, knocking him backwards and down a ridge where he breaks his leg badly exposing his bones.
The thing in the wood hunts them, October sharpens branches and makes some kind of trap. While this fight against something supernatural in the woods is going on the father and son are having flashbacks to the tragedy that befell them. It seems that October and his sister were unnaturally close and that the deputy sheriff had his own desires for the sister, who rejected him.
I won't spoil it by saying any more. This felt like a slow film, I wasn't too sympathetic to either of the main characters. The awkward communication between father and son did soften with the worsening of their situation. There were still long moments of not talking. I thought it was interesting and well made despite this. Not sure I'd sit through the whole film again though, having said that.
Something was weird about the title, it seems to be known by It's In The Blood but was advertised as Haunting, so when I was searching for it online I had hard a time trying to pin it down. I had to look through all the films on the Horror Channel website to find it.