What I'm Watching: August, 2010

Hey hey, horrorheads!

Taking a break from the dungeon, and thought I'd rear my head to talk a little about stuff.

Not much on the old viewertube lately, since we're in that lull of movies coming out in theatres for Halloween, and the DVDs coming out from last Halloween, but a few things do still appear.

Like Parasomnia.

I came across this movie out of nowhere while seeing what releases were coming out, and it seemed like an interesting idea that hasn't been done that much, and written and directed by William Malone.  Who?  Well, he's probably best known for the 1990s remake of House on Haunted Hill.  Which has its problems, and boy are there problems, but I kinda like.  So I grabbed it.

But you don't care about that, you want to know if it was any good.

And y'know what?  It was!  Surprisingly enough, with the other credits to Malone's name.  He's not made a lot of good movies.

As before, Parasomnia has problems too.  The story is a little too straightforward, the acting isn't great from time to time, the dialogue is a lot stilted, although in fairness a lot of that is relegated to the very noir detectives, and that's clearly deliberate.

The plot circles around a young man who discovers a girl suffering from a sleep disorder that keeps her asleep most of her life, and is only awake for minutes or hours at a time.  The reverse of most people, to put it another way.  Or the way it feels my days are going lately, to put it a third way.  But I digress...

Their relationship gets complicated when Danny discovers Laura's mind has been tampered with by a sociopathic, murderous, mesmerist who was kept tied up in the padded room next to her place at the psych ward.

There's some amazing bloody parts in this movie, Laura is a thoroughly innocent and charming character whom I quite felt for as she's been so manipulated and has no idea what's real and what's a dream.  A situation that hasn't been helped by Volpe's hypnotic voice.

The thing I loved most about this movie is the cinematography.  The directing is amazing in a lot of scenes, and even the credits are gorgeous.  The plot was lacking, but this was an enthralling movie to just watch.  Forget the story, just get this movie to watch.  The colours, the angles, and editing...Malone may not be a good writer, but man can he direct the crap out of a movie.  For a low-budget independent movie, this rivals the look of many bigger horror flicks.

I've seen better movies.  I can nitpick this thing to pieces.  But the more I watch it, you know what?  The more I kinda love it.  It's pretty solid, and developes the characters well, before the bodies start hitting the floorboards.  And hey, it's got Jeffrey Combs, and he's always fun to watch.  It's not the best movie, but it's the one I was most surprised by how much I enjoy it.

Aside from that, I've also just wrapped up watching the newest MST3K DVD boxed set, as I tend to do every few months.  Another great release from Shout! Factory.  Not much more to say on that.  More of the same, really.

There's a handful of newer horror related films sitting next to me waiting to be watched, so I'll cover those in my next WIW post, most likely.

But before I get to those, there's the next movie to watch for this site, so keep your eyes open, and see you in the theatre!

J