Pet Sematary (1989)

Yesterday I was searching for something to watch with the girls downstairs and decided to search my streaming services to find something. After some internal debate, I decided on the 1989 Stephen King adaptation Pet Sematary.

Plot/ Behind a young family's home in Maine is a terrible secret that holds the power of life after death. When tragedy strikes, the threat of that power soon becomes undeniable.

This is one of the Stephen King adaptations that have a place right in the middle of the catalog. While it is nowhere near as good as The Shining or Misery, it is not nearly as bad as Maximum Overdrive or Christine. For fans of King, this movie does have a better than average feel, mostly because King himself penned the script. The cast is an interesting mix, the scenery is amazing, the storyline interesting, the effects solid, and the performances are decent, yet even those positives cannot make this reach the potential that it held inside. Unfortunately, the characters feel underdeveloped, the atmosphere is flat, there really aren’t any scares, and a lot of the movie felt restrained to a point where things become overly predictable. In the end, this is another case where the book is much better than the movie adaptation. Is this a terrible movie? No, but it also isn’t anywhere close to being an effective horror movie.

Muck (2015)

Metropolis was an awesome movie, and in many ways, I am still fascinated by how well the restoration of the print translated. However, one can only live inside the mind of a silent film for so much time. Getting back to the modern horror entries, I decided to dive into a slasher for the next review. A clear throwback to the 1980s, 2015s Muck.

Plot/ After narrowly escaping an ancient burial ground, a group of friends find themselves trapped between two evils, forcing them to fight, die, or go back the way they came.

This is an interesting flick that transported me back to my teen years and the direct to VHS no-budget horror of the 1980s. In fact, in many ways, that is exactly what this movie is, a no-budget kickstarter funded throwback slasher, and because of that, many will be unable to understand the draw to the film. While the film is nowhere near a masterpiece, it fits into the genre featuring all of the elements that made me want to run to the video stores in the 1980s. There are random murders, nonsense dialog, uneven cinematography, boobs, cardboard characters that make terrible decisions, unreal killers, and did I say boobs? Honestly, this one will in no way be mistaken for a masterpiece, but it could have easily been a cult classic had it been released during the era of big boxed VHS slashers. In the end, this movie will not appeal to the modern horror fan that thinks that the slasher craze started with Scream. However, if you are a child of the 1980s and remember some of the schlock filled slashers that made that decade great, you should enjoy this as much as I did. Not for everyone, but it does have some entertaining moments and will be enjoyed by some audiences.

Rites of Passage (2012)

As the government shutdown news continues to grow, and the idiots in Washington continue to target veterans, my frustration builds. Amazingly, it seems as if veteran’s like myself, do not need anything, and the benefits that we earned protecting the Constitution are but toys for the crooked Globalist establishment.  Well, enough on that for tonight. To get back into the swing of things, I decided to check out the  2012 indie flick Rites of Passage.

Plot/ An anthropology student invites his classmates and professor to his family's abandoned ranch, once a sacred Chumash burial ground, to recreate an ancient ceremony.

I am always for finding a low budget entry, and that is exactly what this is. Like most in this vein, Rites of Passage is definitely a mixed bag, something one should expect when venturing into this realm. While the pacing was off and it took some time getting started, it definitely had some entertaining elements and eye candy.  However, even with the mindless slasher elements, there is a lot that was more than uneven. The acting is all over, the characterization so-so, the characters miserable, the storyline too layered with sub-plots and there was an extremely disjointed feel to the entire movie; almost like there was a battle with the script in the overall direction of the flick. In the end, this is far from perfect and is just another entry into the mindless bin. Sure, there are worse films, but that should be no reason to run out and grab this.