My Movie Reviews!

MY WATCHLIST

Saw (2004) (WATCHED! SEE MY REVIEW BELOW!!!)

Barbarian (2022)

The Evil Dead (1981)

Weapons (2025)

Pulse (2001)

Wer (2013)

Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Suspiria (1977)

The Amityville Horror (1979)

NON-HORROR

Senseless (1998)

Pink Flamingoes (1972)

Donnie Darko (2001)

Tank Girl (1995)

Interview With The Vampire (1994)

SCREAM (1996)

Actors: Neve Campbell, Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, etc.

Honest Review: This is my favorite movie! It definitely changed horror as a genre going into the 2000s. It is sometimes described as a horror comedy because of some references made to other tropes/movies. The plot centers around Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) as she fights to survive a masked killer hunting her and her friends. First off, Skeet Ulrich plays an a amazing Billy Loomis. Dude, the slowed down '(Don't Fear) The Reaper' by Blue Öyster Cult when he's making out with Sidney at the beginning is suuuucccchhhh a good detail I had to rewatch a few times to catch. Once he's revealed as the killer everything starts making sense- it's reverse-reverse psychology. The movie is designed to maky you think it's Billy, so if you've watched horror movies before you probably won't think he's the killer because it's just too obvious. I had the whole "I KNEW IT" moment when he was revealed, but Stu caught me completely off guard.

&&& then... THE KITCHEN SCENE!!!!1!! It's honestly one of the best killer reveals eva in my opinion... did you know that Billy and Stu were based off of actual killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Albert Loeb, who were in a relationship at the time of their crime? THE CINEMATIC PARALLELS!!! Also, in the original draft, neither Billy nor Stu had a motive? Eventually they gave Billy one (his dad slept with Sidney's mom, blah blah blah, turns out they killed her too and framed Cotton Weary) but left Stu motiveless. He later says (after Billy hits him with a phone in a fit of rage) that his motive was peer pressure. This means he was lowkey just killing people bc Billy told him to. Legend.

This is also shown by Randy's comment about Stu being Billy's lapdog (?). Their dynamic is so interesting to me, and is actually really typical of real-life killer duos, where one is the 'Leader' (Billy) and the other is the 'Follower' (Stu). Speaking of Randy, he's literally the best character ever.

Randy Meeks is my spirit animal. He's sooooo into horror movies, he works at a video store. He's clocky here and in the sequel. A+ character, no notes.

AND SIDNEY??? i have a lot to say abt her and final girls as a whole so i'm gonna go scholar mode rq...

Sidney represents one of the two archetypes female characters often embody in slasher films: The Final Girl. What constitutes a Final Girl? Well, for one, they have to survive until the end of the movie, hence the ‘final’ label. Secondly, they usually say things like, ‘Nooo, I don’t really want to go to a party in the middle of the woods with underage drinking and general debauchery!’ To which their friend (The Scream Queen) says: ‘Don’t be a square.’ In short, the Final Girl is more levelheaded and frankly more realistic to viewers, designed to embody the ‘No, don’t open that door!’s and ‘Run! Ohmigod he’s right behind you!’s so often heard while watching. Maybe she makes a few mistakes, but she always makes it to the end of the night. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that the ‘girl’ part is optional: Hooper and Brody in Jaws (1975), Childs and/or Macready in The Thing (1982) (it’s complicated), and Chris in Get Out (2017) all follow the Final Girl formula to a T. What about the other archetype, the Scream Queen? Usually used in the film industry to describe an actress who stars in lots of horror movies, such as Jamie Lee Curtis, the term Scream Queen will be used in this context to parallel the Final Girl. Example: Tatum Riley, Sidney’s closest friend and thematic counterpart in Scream. She has looser morals (she drinks and has premarital sex, gasp!) and she doesn’t seem to take the ‘Ghostface Killer’ thing too seriously, leading to her demise in the doggy door of a garage. Even the character’s clothing is more revealing than Sidney’s (The number one rule to surviving a slasher is to never, ever wear a crop top.) And, of course, she screams like a queen.

Since King Kong in 1933 until the present day, Scream Queens follow 3 simple rules when compared to Final Girls: They’re wilder and more promiscuous, more one-dimensional, and almost always die by the end of the film. In this sense, horror media with these two tropes essentially split female characters into two spheres: Feminine (the Scream Queen) and Masculine (the Final Girl). From here we can establish that the Scream Queen is seen as the ‘normal’ female character and the Final Girl is the ‘unnatural’ female character. In fact, it is her otherness that saves her in the end. By presenting masculinity and intelligence in women as useful, horror films can actually add to feminist ideals, which is immediately cancelled out with the amount of gratuitous cleavage and nudity in many horror flicks. The Final Girl trope can even be applied to queer identity. It plays into the stereotype of lesbians being more ‘masculine’ and having a feminine counterpart (i.e., butches/studs and femmes). Female empowerment and queer empowerment are closely intertwined as social movements, and Final Girls can offer canvases to demonstrate and celebrate both. This isn’t to say that all Final Girls are masculine and all Scream Queens are feminine (Black Christmas (1974) is a good example of the opposite,) or that a female character has to be exclusively one or the other, or even that they have to be a girl.

THE LOST BOYS (1987)

Actors: Corey Haim, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Alex Winter, etc.

Honest Review: omg squeeee vampire gang! quit your job and join my vampire gang! I would barely call this a horror movie without like the last 20-ish minutes. It's sooooo awesome and the costume design is magnifique! The story revolves around Michael Emerson and his little brother Sam, who move to Santa Carla, California, which unbeknownst to them is infested with vampires (why they choose to live in cali of all places is never established). Michael always seems to be in a state of vague distress and/or confusion throughout this whole movie, which really elevates the experience for me personally lol. Then THE LOST BOYS! They are pretty much a vampire gang/maybe polycule that try to indoctrinate our boy Michael by getting him to drink someone's (presumably David's?) blood from a bottle. Like yeah i get this is a metaphor for peer pressure but if Kiefer Sutherland was seductively telling me to drink something that looks like wine I probably would too.

And if things couldn't get any cooler the vampires live in a hotel that sunk into a fault line during an earthquake and drive motorcycles. Also they can fly and get gnarly stage makeup when they kill people. EDGY TEEN VAMPIRES YEAH! in the original draft they were actually supposed to be kids but Joel Schumacher (da director) decided to make them all at least 18 to appeal to older audiences. Michael is honestly so real for everything he does because I would do the same. The Lost Boys uses themes from the 80's Satanic Panic and AIDS epidemic and i think thats awesome. A lot of vampire movies actually use the AIDS epidemic as a theme to create meaningful commentary disguised as kitschy horror slop. Here is an excerpt i wrote in an unpublished essay that i tink sums it up pretty well: "Vampires lend themselves to all sorts of metaphors, including disease, corruption, sexual predation, regular predation, gluttony, and the unknown, to name a few. Most of these themes can be used to represent attitudes towards a queer community: disease could be the AIDS epidemic and the persecution that came with it, sexual predation could show itself in the harmful stereotype of gay men as predators. Either way, with the ample opportunities to analyze nebulously queer vampires (I’m looking at you, Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt,) the beauty (or lack thereof) is in the eye of the beholder." That being said, I definitely think the Lost Boys are metaphors for the aids epidemic BECAUSE:

1. They share blood (great way to get aids)

2. They have great fashion sense (one earring was a sort of code for being gay in the 80's, and of course all the boys and even michael are rocking that)

3. They make michael drink blood and then he wears one earring. THEY TURNED HIM GAY! OBVIOUSLY! WHY CANT SAM SEE THAT!

AHHHH i just love this movie so much :)

i'll leave you with this.

JEEPER CREEPERS (2001)

Actors: Gina Phillips, Justin Long, Patricia Belcher, etc.

Honest Review: This is genuinely SUCH an overhated film. Like yesss it's annoying to watch the characters make obviously terrible descisions but it's justin long! come on man! So basically this movie is about two siblings, Patricia and Darry, who are travelling through backcountry highways to visit their parents. They almost get run over by an ancient hearse/truck but they're fine, don't worry. Then they see the same truck and some dude dumping bodies down a chute so of course they have to investigate. Darry gets traumatised for life probably but it's too late... THE CREATURE HAS PICKED UP HIS SCENT! (using his dirty laundry he conveniently kept in his backseat.) I love how the song ('Jeepers Creepers, Where'd You Get Those Peepers') that tells you when the Creeper is near morphs from an old-timey tune to a modern honestly banger pop song, just a really cool detail.

And the ending caught me totally off guard! I watched this on a road trip and I was just sitting there in the back seat like this: :0

and so the creeper gets darry and eats his eyes. and the movie just ends. I haven't watched the second one yet but it's totally on my list. all around cool film.

SAW (2004)

Actors: Cary Ewles, Leigh Whannels, I probably spelled all their names wrong lol ill come back

Honest Review: To preface I decided to pull an all-nighter and have a saw-athon with my friends :3 we had been wanting to watch it for a long time and it was my friend's bday so! It started out kind of cheesy splatter-film esque with the first trap, but by the end of it my jaw was on the flooooorrrr!!! The credits rolling to Adam's screams was bone chilling and when john kramer got off the floor I shreiked. John is such a complex character. he genuinely thinks hes doing the right thing even when he's actually completely nuts.

This is so silly to me because adam would totally say this. SPEAKING OF... queer subtext! Adam is already wearing the billy loomis fit so u know something is up... ANYWAYS... Jigsaw (aka john kramer) locks Adam and Lawrence in a dirty bathroom and chains them to opposite sides by their ankles. He locked Lawrence up because he was an absent husband/father and may have been having an affair (and he also gave john kramer his cancer diagnosis which probably didn't help) and he locked up Adam because adam was being paid to stalk and take photos of people, INCLUDING LAWRENCE!!! also this whole thing takes place the day before 9/11 for some reason.

AND AMANDA... oughhh my girlfriend. she is absolutely the coolest! she escapes the reverse-beartrap and becomes a jigsaw apprentice (or as i like to call them jiglets bc... yk... pigs) all while ABSOLUTELY FITTED UP!!! I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW TUFF HER WARDROBE IS!!!

cuntasaurus rex btw