The Innkeepers (2011)

I watched this film this week. It's the story of the last weekend of a hotel that is supposedly haunted, it is closing down and the last two members of staff are caretaking. They also have an interest in the paranormal and are interested in capturing proof of the paranormal activity in the hotel. There is a ghost in the hotel and it is a ghost of a woman called Madeleine who hung herself after she was left stranded at the altar of her own wedding. During the course of the film a woman (played by Kelly McGillis) checks into the hotel, she used to be an actress and she is recognised by one of the staff who is a massive fan. However, the woman explains she gave up acting to become a medium. Lots of weird things happen and the female hotel employee bares the brunt of the strange phenomena. Unfortunately she also has asthma and this is not good news. Worthy of a watch but not a great film, a little bit slow to begin with and I didn't know whether it would be a comedy horror or a scary film - from the first 20 minutes you might be confused into thinking it was a comedy.

No One Lives (2013)

This film is an entertaining thrill ride. It moves along at a great pace and has a good cast. The characters are enjoyable to watch. It concerns a gang of murderous crazies who stumble on a couple having a meal in a bar. One of the gang members starts to harass them but is told to cool it by the gang leader, he cools it for a while but later smashes the window of the couple’s car forcing them to crash off the road. When the man in the couple wakes up he finds himself chained up in a garage with the girl he was with in the bar.
Meanwhile the gang member is searching the car and discovers a panel underneath it with holes. On closer inspection he sees someone in the car. From now on the tables are turned and the gang becomes the hunted.
It all plays really well. The deaths are bloody and just as vicious as you would expect. Some interesting touches here and there and I’d say it was directed very well. Very enjoyable to watch, if you like this sort of thing.

Active noise cancelling headphones

So a friend at work was telling me a few weeks ago how he bought an expensive pair of headphones and feels it was one of his best investments ever. He bought a pair of Bose headphones, one of the expensive makes. I was talking to my wife about the music volume at the gym being very loud and sometimes overpowering the music I’m listening to with my earbuds and headphones that I wear there. She was saying the same thing and we decided we would both buy a pair of noise cancelling headphones for the gym. She opted for ones similar to the folding Sony headphones we bought for travelling to the States last year. Hers are wired and she has to put an AA battery in one of the ear cups for the noise cancelling feature. I read a few Amazon reviews and opted for a pair hat were compared very favourably to the Bose headphones but for a fraction of the cost. My headphones are made by Boltune and they are quite brilliant. The noise cancellation works really well and they are ideal for the train. They claim to have a 30 hour battery life and have a feature whereby 5 mins of charge time gives 2 hours use. I haven’t tested this out but I am very happy with the comfort, sound and build quality. I haven’t been able to compare hem to the Bose, I would. Hope that the Bose offer something in the audio quality department that I’m not getting with the Boltunes, especially considering the price. I expect that Bose have a wider audio spectrum in the treble area and that their sound separation is better: BUT I don’t know this for sure.

Autumn equinox

So today marks the autumn equinox. The date when the amount of day and night are equal. After today until late in December we get fewer hours of daylight than night time. Part of me likes this time of year. I like the aspect of being snug in bed when the temperature starts to fall. I don’t like being out in the cold so much, especially when its cold and raining. I also dislike having colds this time of year. It’s bound to happen when children return to school and all pass their germs around.

I’ve not much else to say on the subject but just wanted to make a comment on the time of year. Happy autumn equinox folks!

Bound to vengeance (2015)

Finished watching this film tonight. It doesn’t seem to have won over any critics on Rotten Tomatoes and I think I can see why. It is a film that concerns females held captive by men who want to keep them as sex slaves I think although it’s a bit ambiguous how much sexual abuse the women in the film have suffered. The female lead escapes and turns the tables on her captor and she forces him at gun point to take her to other houses where other women are being held so that she can rescue them. She learns that he is not in the captor game alone and has to confront other men. There are flashbacks sections told through home movie footage of her life before being held as a prisoner. In these we see with her boyfriend at a fun fair. The boyfriend in question turns out to be involved in some way too. The subject matter of the film is unpleasant (no surprise there) but I think as drawn some criticism for trivialising the suffering of the main character through the suddenness of her turnaround from captive to captor herself. I think this is fair criticism. Many things about the film just do not stack up and it leaves the unpleasant thought in the viewer’s mind that this kind of story somehow trivialises the real world slave trade. As a film the plot moves fairly well and the acting is alright, the dialogue doesn’t seem too far fetched even though the story is weak and lacks compassion for the victim’s plight. Not a film to watch on a date certainly. I don’t really understand who this film is aimed at.

Primal (2010)

I began watching this film several weeks ago I think, I’d forgotten I hadn’t finished it until I resumed watching this evening.It was clearly not a priority to finish it back then and not today either but I did. It concerns a group of young Australians who want to take a trip into the outback to investigate an old cave painting. One of the young women is claustrophobic and doesn’t want to go into the cave, which is bad news because going through the cave is a massive shortcut to the camp site.
So the cave is not a dormant thing as they thought it was. I can’t remember all of the details now to be fair but because they are young and horny a couple decide to go skinny dipping. Unfortunately the water is full of leeches and the girl has to be rescued. During the night she gets progressively worse. She eventually turns into some kind of animal with a mouth full of teeth. The special effects in this film are not that great to be honest. Towards the end of the film there are some decidedly bad effects, almost cartoonish I old say - but in a bad way. One by one they drop, until left with one girl at the end and you guessed it, the survivor was the girl who was claustrophobic and yep, she had to go through the cave to escape. All a bit staid and predictable. I can’t really say there was much to enjoy in the story but the setting and something about the colour grading in the film were pleasant to watch. Ther acting was alright but the script they had to work with was pretty poor.

Wind River (2017)

This film was surprisingly good. It has Jeremy Renner in it as the main star and Elizabeth Olsen as a rookie FBI agent who is the closest agent on the scene and has been sent to check out a murder of a girl found on the snowy mountain of a native Indian reservation.
This film builds slowly to the climax, which is exciting and dramatic. Overall, quite a classic story and told in a pacey and stylistic way. Very heartily recommend this as a good watch.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

This is one of those films that has been quite influential in the genre of horror by a director that has been influential throughout his career, Wes Craven. Like it or loathe it as a film, it has some pedigree. I have seen parts of it over the years but never really sat down to watch it from beginning to end and I'm glad I did because it is not a bad film overall. You have to accept that some of the acting is not great but move past that and it is an interesting little film. I watched it on the Horror Channel, as most of the films I review and because of that I might be missing some parts due to cuts but even so, I really like the ending. It's quite bleak and surprising for its time.

Nothing left to fear (2013)

This film tells the tale of a family moving from the big city to a small town where the father is to become the new pastor of the church. One of the first scenes sees the family pulling in to a farm because they are lost. One of the teenage daughters sees a farmhand bleeding out a sheep on the back of a truck. Still, it doesn’t put her off that much as she tries to pull him a few mins later into the film.
The town seems welcoming at first. However, there is a dark secret in the town. One of the family’s daughters is soon in serious trouble.
I can’t say I enjoyed this film very much, although it isn’t terrible. It’s just not very scary and nothing is really explained - maybe that’s what it should have been called!

Sad news of Emily Hartridge’s death

I heard some shocking news yesterday. A video blogger I have enjoyed watching for a few years was killed in a road traffic accident on Friday. Emily Hartridge was her name and she was beautiful and funny and a genuinely nice person. Such a shame and a terribly sad loss to everyone who knew her and those who thought they knew her through her open and honest and funny videos. She was in her early thirties and had so much more to give the world, such a tragedy we have lost her. Terribly sad for her family and sisters, who she was very close to. Such a terrible shock for them, a shock for us all but especially her beloved ones.

Find her work here:
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/emilyhart

Instagram and Twitter
@emilyhartridge

Stung (2015)

Started watching this film and after 30 mins or so, I turned off because I as tired and needed sleep. It wasn’t great and certainly wasn’t engaging enough for me to want to watch it all in one sitting. Over the next couple of days though I did find myself kind of wanting to see what was going to happen. A pair of young caterers were working on a remote country estate and guests were arriving as the wasps started to get bigger.
It’s a kind of monster horror film with big wasps with barbs that pierce flesh. Nothing out of the ordinary really. I couldn’t work out if it was all being played for laughs or not. There are sequences that are more light hearted than horror. Nothing I’d watch again but it was fairly entertaining mainly through the relationship between the young caterers. Not a scary film though.

British Summer Time

This weekend we have unusually hot weather from Europe, France recorde it’s highest temperature since records began, hitting just over 45 degrees Celsius. It is probably going to reach over 30 degrees here, I can feel it is starting to get uncomfortable and is only 9:58am.

I’ve got the garden furniture out and intend to be in the garden as much as possible, in shade of course.

The reason for this post though, is that during the summer I think the government (the nation as a whole) should compensate us for the rest of the year. Here is what I propose:

June and July - weekend extension to include Fridays (a 3 day weekend)

August - weekend extension to include Thursdays (a 4 day weekend)

These two simple change would, I believe, improve the health and productivity of the nation. I don’t believe we would lose anything by making these changes. They would give us more time to do stuff, without having to rush around in the hot weather. There would be more time to relax, so we would be less stressed and more motivated when we are at work.

The changes above would be much more useful and meaningful than the hour the clocks change.

Please, someon with any political power - MAKE THIS A CAMPAIGN PROMISE and I guarantee you’ll be elected!

Boogeyman (2005)

I watched this film this week and largely had the feeling it was. Fairly decent premise that was eventually let down by not being scary at all. I don’t think the actors were particularly awful or wooden. The story was just watered down and the psychological aspects of a child with night terrors was just not very scarily conveyed. Yet we all know that night terrors can be horrific for parents and children. I think one of the big problems with the film was that there was no real development o the relationship between the father and son. Yet we are expected to believe that a child who sees his father pulled into a closet at such a young age has affected him for the rest of his life. He seems to trust all the counselling he has had to convince him that it was just his processing of the trauma of his father simply leaving his mother - and not a result of the supernatural. Another issue is that, with a lot of Hesse sort of films, there was no explanation of what it was that was in the closet. It seemed to resemble a toy figure he had on his bedside table but why? Ultimately disappointing but I kept watching hoping for something interesting to happen. It didn’t.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

I watched this Canadian horror with a feeling of growing disappointment. I watched it through to the end though and have to say it felt like a long time had passed. I could have been doing something better than watch this.
It is a sort of a modern day take on the werewolf genre, with two sisters who don’t fit into the typical teen stereotypes. They make horror photographs with decapitated body parts. The sister who isn’t ginger is a lot more introverted than her sister Ginger. Something is mutilating local pets. Ginger gets attacked by it and gets infected. She starts to grow hair and a tail. She attacks a boy who fancies her and he starts to turn too. Her sister and her drug dealing friend find a cure and use it on the infected boy not knowing if the consequences will lead to death or cure or nothing at all. Fortunately, the cure works on him. Ginger eventually fully mutates into an animal and we don’t get to see if she is ever cured. Of course not, as it is the first in a trilogy of films. I am not going to bother with the others.

Easter Sunday 2019

The wonderful aroma of a fine Sunday lunch is drifting from downstairs as I write this post from my bedroom. Our guest, my mother in law, is expecte any minute. So, I’m snatching a few seconds to write this down.
Changes are sometimes subtle, since Valentine’s Day we’ve been regularly attending the gym we joined and to my surprise we have kept it up through the cold nights. My weight was starting to trouble me because I wasn’t eating well and wasn’t exercising and could not see the situation improving without taking action. We had been discussing joining the gym since November 2018 but had been waiting for the right time. I thought it was now or never back in February. I was struggling to tie my own shoes, bending down I could feel my belly getting I the way. So after two months of regular exercise and eating better I am happy with progress. I was over 75kg in weight and for my height that wasn’t where I should have been, my BMI was into the orange and would be heading towards the red if I didn’t do something to arrest the decline. I was also worried about the amount of sweets I was eating and diabetes. Now, my weight is 66.9kg, that’s almost a loss of 10kg. I want to get my weight under 64kg, so I still have some work to do but the great thing is I feel better. I can bend to tie my laces without my belly preventing me. I can wear shirts without feeling they are bulging around my middle. I can even get into and button jeans I thought were lost to me. So, I am happy with my progress!

Spring update

It’s been a while since I posted here. I haven’t really been watching many horror films this year, the films I’ve been watching have mostly either been on TV or they are on a scratch-off poster of 100 greatest films we bought my son.
My interests continue to be mainly music, video games and photography, a lot more on the photography side though to be fair. Films and reading have been the biggest losers in this. I also do more drawing now I have an ipad and the Apple Pencil.
During February half term I also joined a gym, along with my wife. We go to the gym 3 times a week and that eats into my time too. I don’t exactly enjoy the gym but I do want to lose some weight and I know that I have to go if I am going to do that.
I suppose the time I would have sent watching films is also taken up by watching concert footage of my favourite bands - either on DVD/Blu-Ray or YouTube.
Not much of an update I know, but there you go. The one thing I haven’t mentioned is BREXIT. There has been non-stop news coverage of it and I’m quite sick of it all. So I won’t bother saying anymore about it here. Suffice to say that a right load of bollocks is spoken on all sides.

Emelie (2016)

An interesting little film that I quite enjoyed. It concerns a baby sitter who a couple hire based on good feedback. Problem is, the babysitter turns out to be a total psycho. It builds up slowly and develops very well. I’d certainly watch this again and hav no problem recommending it.  Sarah Bolger plays the central character and does a great job. She doesn’t overplay the character and because of that she is more believable - a great attribute if you’re in a horror film.

Happy New Year

The year 2018 is over and 2019 has begun. The weather is dry at least, so the year is not starting with drizzle as it has in previous years. I slept in, have been sleeping later in the mornings during the holidays so that will stop in the morning when I have to return to the work routine and have to catch a train.
I don’t really do new year resolutions but I do have plans for the year in my head, which I just need to turn into reality. It will not be easy to achieve some of the plans but some are ongoing things I just want to start and then keep up. Not giving up or slipping back are good goals to have for the year ahead.
I hope 2019 is a better year in terms of health for my family. There have been some setbacks and operations and treatments but I hope everyone gets better this year.