Pretty great in terms of vibe and set piece creep-outs - if not in terms of the story itself.
Love the scary trope of catastrophic messiness as the anti-Marie Kondo tell that shit’s about to go wrong.
Not sure how I feel tho about virally expanding curses. It become about “what are the rules,” and they’re not always clear, but even so it feels mechanistic. The horror as one-and-the same as marketing campaigns (look at yourself in the mirror, marketers),…
Uh, not great, but not horrible. Back when horror movies didn’t really scare but inculcated a low level dread. Also back when movies had resourceful boyfriends who actually used to try and save their girlfriends from witch cults instead of just fucking and running.
What else:
- A KISS album visible on a vinyl rack
- Some acoustic Wickerman nods
- Going to the library for research
- Hospital record data as stacked rows of folders with actual paper
The…
It's odd given it's decent soundtrack, that this film felt so disconnected from the context of its release year (1990). It's inauthentic depiction of high school kids is like something an aging 60s former hippie might write, which as it turns out is the case here. Something half-baked and pro forma - that pouring bad acting on top - can't even heat up in the film's microwave.
Half a star for the soundtrack and because someone we know knows the boob double.
For all the low-rent post-dystopian LARPing scenes, like geocaching for film nerds, and with character roles as circumscribed as D&D characters, I enjoyed this so much more than I did on first viewing decades ago. I like long detailed inventorying looks at what is in puddles as much as the next person. Is it a sign of greatness when a film becomes more iconic and immortal outside of its time? For all the despair and speechifying there is a sense…
