“Shortly after delivering a patient to an understaffed hospital, a police officer experiences strange and violent occurrences seemingly linked to a group of mysterious hooded figures.” -IMDB
Recently I saw Drive and it had that 80’s background synthesizer mood. Soon that I saw Turbo Kid that had similar background music. Could this be coming back? It works for me!
Beyond the Gates (2016)
Not Rated | 1h 24min | Adventure, Horror | 9 December 2016 (USA) Two estranged brothers reunite at their missing father’s video store and find a VCR board game dubbed ‘Beyond The Gates’ that holds a connection to their father’s disappearance.
Director: Jackson Stewart
Writers: Stephen Scarlata, Jackson Stewart
Stars: Graham Skipper, Chase Williamson, Brea Grant
This one does uses that 80’s synth sound too only it’s decidedly a horror/thriller film unlike the thriller Drive or comedy action Turbo Kid. When your budget is low, you have to get creative with sets and effects. This film indeed does that effectively. What better concept for a film like this than a VHS tape that opens the door of hell?
The story revolves around a guy, his girlfriend, and his estranged brother who he grew up with in a small town. The protagonist’s dad owned a VHS store there and so the protagonist and his brother spent a lot of time hanging around the movies and playing with reminders and other equipment there. They stumble across a tape that is what used to be known as a VHS RPG. In this case they are given clues on how to get “beyond the gates” and reunite with their father who has mysteriously disappeared.
There is blood and guts and it ends up being a pretty “jump scary” film. Even so, a goofy vibe permeates the whole film. It reminds me of the inside jokes of nerds from high school woven into a film that most viewers wouldn’t laugh at or be scared by. Nonetheless, I found it a lot of fun. The ending is ridiculous but it takes itself so seriously you can’t help but find it satisfying.
Final Thoughts
Beyond the Gates is a low budget horror/thriller that brings you back to the 80’s horror mood. The synthesized music seems a virtual red carpet for Michael Jackson’s dancing thriller zombies. The effects are creative, though not very believable yet that isn’t important in this fun under-produced film about playing a VHS tape that opens the door of hell. I would say that not all will “get” this one. It took me two sits to actually finish it. Still, if you can shut the world out and just enjoy low budget horror with a somewhat silly story, this is your movie. To you and fans like you (like me), I recommend it.
You might argue that Rod Serling had a negative view of the future when he wrote his Twilight Zone episodes. Many of them are fatalistic. This film is along those lines. When you have a negative view of authority and even the corporations you work for, it makes sense they might want you dead in the name of an experiment. I think these are the times we live in: sardonic, negative, fearful. This film certainly echoes that.
The Belko Experiment (2016)
R | 1h 29min | Action, Horror, Thriller | 17 March 2017 (USA)
1:01
Watch Now
From $14.99 (SD) on Amazon Video
In a twisted social experiment, 80 Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company’s intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.
Director: Greg McLean
Writer: James Gunn
Stars: John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona
This film looks a lot like The Purge. You have the established workplace forcing people to kill each other. I wonder why this experiment is important to the corporation and what do they hope to learn from it. The film didn’t do very well with critics, this nonsensical “experiment” may have had something to do with it. Like I sometimes do, I saw it all as a social commentary in the form of metaphor.
When employees are let go, they are in essence killed. By that I mean, they cease to exist in the workplace. The victims in this film are bloodied and certainly they would wish they’d have been fired instead. There are a series of killing rounds and a short time where the viewer can divine a meaning from it all. For me the message were nothing new: corporations see us all as expendable and people are evil when they have to kill to survive.
Final Thoughts
If you liked The Purge, you’ll like this. It’s more a thriller than horror, though it is labeling itself horror. There are buckets of blood if you like that sort of film. I recommend it as a bloody thriller that it more or less mindless. You can read stuff in like I did but it’s a very banal film, what you see is what you get. Of course, if you see deeper, leave me a comment and we’ll discuss it!
This film is streaming now on Netflix (USA). While this is a horror film, it shows interesting and important history of the 8 year war between Iraq and Iran. I found it amazing to watch what these two middle eastern countries did to each other, each in the name of its god. There is a strong and scary film here. It’s not horror in every scene but there are enough jump scares to keep fans happy.
Under the Shadow (2016)
PG-13 | 1h 24min | Horror, War | 7 October 2016 (USA)
As a mother and daughter struggle to cope with the terrors of the post-revolution, war-torn Tehran of the 1980s, a mysterious evil begins to haunt their home.
NETFLIX: Available in United States of America
From $3.99 (SD) on Amazon Video
This is the story of a mother and her daughter in time of war. Both suffer extreme stress levels as the father/husband has to leave them alone to go and be a doctor in the war for a time. While home alone in a war zone, the mother and daughter experience a strange haunting that neither can explain.
I saw a comparison to The Babadook early on. It’s a psychological drama that has horror elements. There are times we do not know if the scary elements are real or just stress induced psychosis from the mother. The daughter has these visions too though so it seems something is happening. It’s hard I think to explain away a lot of what happens. It is in my opinion indeed a legend, a ghost story. How much the viewer wants to believe depends on her/him.
This film does have subtitles so if that puts you off, stay away. As for me I found them easy to follow and greatly enjoyed this foreign horror film. The casting and acting is top-notch. This is a must for horror fans as well as psychological drama ones.
If a film is a thriller, posing as a horror, and being undeniably a mystery, how would I rate it? I think I’d find the most dominant genre and start there. This film works as a thriller but fails completely as a mystery. It has 3 jump scares but to me that doesn’t a horror movie make. It was hard for me to understand what the director tried to do here. This is no feel good night out film, to be sure.
It Comes at Night
“Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son, but this will soon be put to test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.” -IMDB
Horror, Mystery
R
Fri 09 Jun 2017 UTC
91min
IMDB Rating: 7.3
Trey Edward Shults directed this along with Krisha (2015). Krisha is also a heavily depressing and unsatisfying film. Perhaps this could be a trademark in the making. In his other film, we have a woman going to a family reunion with people she hasn’t seen for years because she has been an addict and locked up in rehab. It’s awkward comment after awkward comment and it appears to be filmed on an iphone at a family thanksgiving. We can see from both these film this director foster discomfort on screen. The big question then becomes: “Why?” If you have an answer, please leave it in the comments.
Joel Edgerton is the patriarch male in the house in the woods. He plays the role well but I can’t imagine the purpose of the things he does, gun and/or axe in hand. I enjoyed him in The Gift, where he played a high school friend returning to torture a childhood bully. That was the biggest film I recall seeing him in.
This a story about a family of 3 in the woods who wear gas masks and fear their own infection by unknown outsiders. They join with another couple, forcefully and hash out tense relationships in the house, never going out at night.
We’ve seen the psychopath who demonizes innocent people in Frailty and so many other films of this theme. We’ve seen the “compound” doomsday prepper who is out to protect himself and/or his loved ones like 10 Cloverfield Lane. We’ve also seen much of what we see in this film as far as the woods and creepiness therein in the Walking Dead only this film has no zombies. This film adds nothing to the common theme. Moreover, the mystery in the film is never explained.
Final Thoughts With so many dark issues facing us as a culture that sees films, why make such a negative, violent film? I’m confused as to the message of the director. I think it might be that if you kill one person, you’ll never be able to stop, but who knows. When the credits rolled, a watcher said, “What the fucking fuck?” I agree completely. As far as the ending of this marginal film goes. It lost points for posing as horror but most of all it lost for not concluding its own mystery. It does ok as a thriller. I don’t recommend this film.
The concept of an unknown creature (the xenomorph) being inside you and feeding off your insides is a bone shivering one indeed. That was the concept that catapulted this first of the Alien movies into orbit.
Alien
“After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as a distress call, its landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious life-form, and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.” -IMDB
Horror, Sci-Fi
TV-14
Fri 22 Jun 1979 UTC
117min
IMDB Rating: 8.5
Director Ridley Scott had a vision to get this done and he did it with real props, costumes, and a lot of goo! You won’t find any cgi in this film, just well sculpted and shiny creature heads and protruding sharp teeth.
There are so many amazing actors in this first film but Sigourney Weaver will always stand out to me as strong first impression. She is the one who takes on the creature. It’s as if she is attached to it, like its mother. But this mother/child relationship is only host/parasite. The creature wants to kill her and use her to make more offspring.
Like Blade Runner, there is the theme of androids in this film that makes it very interesting. When the android is destroyed for telling the crew they are doomed, it’s his head alone that does the talking. In 1979, special effects were like parlor tricks, they had to use what they had to get the point across. Sometimes, this makes for better effects.
Alien is a space story about a ship sent to retrieve colonists on a far off planet and return them to Earth. They discover a vicious alien lifeform on board that is engineered to wipe out the human race and only they can stop it.
After multiple watchings through the years, I have to say this film is still scary to me and I marvel at how well done the analog effects are. The story is excellent and I hope every horror or sci-fi fan gets a chance to see it once in their lifetime. The acting and the story are top notch and it’s a career high for Ridley Scott as director.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Black outer space is scary. So is being alone. Add to that the fear of an unknown, “Alien,” creature and you have the potential for a terrifying film. Ridley Scott managed to create that. It’s probably one of the most scary films out there in this genre. The idea that nature is cold and uncaring is always a fascinating concept in a movie. Whether it’s a white whale or a 1,000 pound Grizzly Bear, nature needs to feed and it will at any cost in order to survive. In this film, we are held before scenes of nature in its rawest form, uncaring, feeding. It’s a mind-blowing film, I give it my highest recommendation possible to everyone, except young kids say under 8 years old.
Two estranged brothers reunite at their missing father’s video store and find a VCR board game dubbed ‘Beyond The Gates’ that holds a connection to their father’s disappearance.
DAMIEN RILEY | World Music | HQ Blog 
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