The Grudge (2020)

Director: Nicolas Pesce

Notable Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Lin Shaye, Frankie Faison, Jacki Weaver, William Sadler, Tara Westwood, David Lawrence Brown, Zoe Fish

There’s a moment in The Grudge where a loving husband and father-to-be real estate agent, played by the vastly underrated John Cho, hesitates outside of the cursed house at the center of the film. Nothing in particular is there, no ghosts or sinister shadows. He looks around at the semi-desolate street in front of the characteristically part gothic home and begrudgingly moves to go in. It’s moments like these, caressed in the heavyweight of an existential dread knowing something is wrong with no clear indicator to what, which makes The Grudge franchise so timeless. It’s a franchise that is fairly well known around the world. It took Japan by storm with a variety of series from TV to reboots, but a 2004 remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, produced by Ghost House (Sam Raimi and his crew), and directed by the original writer/director Takashi Shimizu is what many people in America will remember. Yes, that remake had a couple of ill crafted sequels that hardly capitalized on the tone indicated in the scene above, but the series has lived on nonetheless.

The Blood Splatter: 2018 Horror Vol. 1 [The Midnight Man, Terrifier, Pyewacket]

THE MIDNIGHT MAN (2018)

Director: Travis Zariwny

Notable Cast: Grayson Gabriel, Emily Haine, Gabrielle Haugh, Summer H. Howell, Keenan Lehmann, Louise Linton, Meredith Rose, Robert Englund, Lin Shaye

The reason why I’ve called you into my office today is that, well, to put it nicely, we need to talk about The Midnight Man. Recently, there has been some speculation that The Midnight Man could have been a good movie. Really, there is potential here. It has a fun monster/game concept at its core, it features a couple of roles for horror elite actors, and the production value is sharp. The problem with it is not how it looks from the outside. It’s the inside. The Midnight Man has one of the thinnest and most illogical scripts I’ve had the pleasure to experience in a long time, the performances of the two/three leads are perplexing at best (jaw droppingly awful at worst,) and the film has a confusing tone. In all honesty, I spent the entire run time of the film desperately trying to figure out if it was meant to be funny. If it was, I didn’t laugh. If it wasn’t, boy, I sure feel awkward that this is how it came out.

Insidious: The Last Key (2018)

Director: Adam Robitel

Notable Cast: Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Josh Stewart, Ava Kolker, Hana Hayes, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Kirk Acevedo, Bruce Davison, Javier Botet

Even with its ups and downs of quality, set by a very high bar with the first Insidious, this modern horror franchise is perhaps still some of the most fun a horror fan can have with a mainstream series. Even when the second film added in a lot of strange layers or the third film stripped it back and shifted Lin Shaye into being the main protagonist, the creative energy and slick universe that was created with this franchise makes each entry entertaining. For this fourth one, which drops the Chapter portion of the title in the previous two sequels and goes with a standard subtitle in The Last Key, Insidious continues to embrace its blend of classic horror tension building with its modern blend of visual strength and genre bending. Like its two predecessors, The Last Key does struggle in trying to bite off more than it can chew when it comes to its script, but it’s still a fun time with plenty of audience pleasing jump scares and lots of intriguing themes to explore. While many other critics have already chosen to write off the franchise at this point and can’t look past the entertainment focused intensions of the film, Insidious: The Last Key is still a decent horror film and a great way to kick off the year in horror.