The Babadook (2014)
Oooh that's intense! If it weren't for the positive buzz I'd have been more hesitant about seeing a film about a boy and his mother facing a monstrous apparition. But there is more going on here than that synopsis might suggest. Nevertheless there are still a few 'ghost story' tropes and anyone reading this review will need to bear my bias against those tropes in mind.
The central premise is that a single mother is bringing up a child while handling the grief over her dead husband. Reversing the more common trope of the mother who dies in childbirth, in this case the father died driving the mother to the hospital.
The mother is distraught from stress of taking care of her child with behavioural difficulties, the stress often keeping her up and the grief of her husband's death constantly lurking in the background. All this stress is brought to the surface in the form of the Babadook, a creature in a long coat with long fingers they discover in a disturbing children's book in the house.
On the one hand the real life terror which builds up as reality gets away from the disturbed mother and son pairing is fantastic. On the other hand, I'm not sure the Babadook adds much to this dynamic. There's a suggestion that the Babadook lurks in the basement, where the dead father's possessions are kept, but the Babadook actually seems to be able to appear wherever it wants, which fits the subject of the mother/son conflict, but makes the Babadook a rather less suitable metaphor. While there were some ways in which the Babadook worked quite well, all the running around and screaming became a little annoying for me.
The acting from both mother and son is fantastic, the imagery is brilliant and this is a highly thought-provoking piece and a tense horror film. Yet all the same, the ghost story tropes irritated me.
B+
Survival Quest (1988)
A Don Coscarelli movie starring Lance Henricksen, strangely unavailable on DVD. (I tracked down a reasonable VHS rip.) It's strange to me, because this film was pretty great. It's also strange to me because this is a lot more conventional than Coscarelli's other movies. It had a bit of a Spielberg feel to it, in fact. But on the down side, there's also a bit of a tv special feel sometimes too. Though a pretty damn good tv special all the same.
The central premise is that two groups are going on a survivalist trip. One group is run by an ex-soldier who emphasises the brutality of nature, while the other emphasises the importance of teamwork for survival.
But it's not as simplistic as that sounds. The bad guy doesn't ignore teamwork in his ideology and the good guy (Lance Henricksen) regularly reminds his group of the brutality of nature. He actually tells them that without him, they'll die in the wilderness.
We see a young Catherine Keener, but the whole cast gives a solid performance. I consistently found myself caught up with the characters and the heartfelt moments. Coscarelli uses every sentimental trick and makes me fall for it every time.
This lesser known Coscarelli film turned out to be a bit of a hidden gem!
A-
Toy Story of Terror (2013)
Despite being a made-for-tv feature, this was about as good as any of Pixar's movies. The meta stuff about the horror genre was very cool and it never felt like it was pulling punches even while it stayed at a child-friendly level.
The script is extremely well constructed. Existing characters were further developed. The animation was gorgeous as ever. And the Transformers-equivalent toy was extremely cool.
A top-notch horror-comedy for children. I approve!
A+