Pere-Lachaise (2006)

Wes Craven’s abysmal entry in the omnibus film Paris, je t’aime. Feels like something a freshman in film school would write. Oscar Wilde would be appalled at this banal tribute to his wit. D-

Deadly Friend (1986)

The emotional maturity of a kid’s movie with the gore of a horror film. I’m not sure who this is for. Outside of the infamous Anne Ramsey basketball death, it can’t even be considered camp. Snooze. D-

Cursed (2005)

As disjointed as it’s IMDB trivia page would suggest, it’s amazing how much Cursed manages to feel exactly like My Soul To Take, which had none of these problems (and was written by Craven to boot!). It’s as if latter-day Wes Craven has elevated hatchet-jobs into an aesthetic. Which makes the films (though Cursed much less so than My Soul To Take) oddly compelling even though they’re completely wretched. Especially awful here is Marco Beltrami’s wall-to-wall score. I don’t know why any filmmaker ever leans on musical score this hard, it almost always chokes the life out of your film. Cursed’s sole saving grace is Jesse Eisenberg, who is way better than the script should allow him to be. Well, that and casting Judy Greer as the lead villain werewolf. All movies should have Judy Greer in them. D-

EDIT: Apparently My Soul To Take also had a ton of production problems and re-shoots, so that explains it. It just isn’t reflected on it’s IMDB trivia page.

Going To Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)

A typically slick and shallow Starz documentary, but I can’t help myself from liking it. Slasher movies, so reliable in their formula, so nostalgically tied to a point of my youth, are my favorite cinematic comfort food and this is like a buffet.

Though, I was a little bothered this time around by how adamantly the film tries to shake claims of misogyny off the genre. I obviously don’t agree with everything Siskel and Ebert had to say about slasher movies, but even after throwing late-80’s slasher films under the bus by talking about how crap they are, it’s odd they wouldn’t show single person admitting that these exploitation films were exploitation films. Even long after the segment on critics of the genre ends, you have woman after woman reassuring us that these movies are great because they empower women so much. Methinks you protest too much, Going to Pieces. C

Scream 4 (2011)

Calling this the best of the Scream sequels is faint praise, but faint praise is all it really deserves. I think the third act almost redeems it, but if you found nothing to enjoy in 2 & 3, you probably won’t like this. C+

Scream 2 (1997)

I certainly didn’t remember this one being WORSE than 3, but there it is. Weak killers, weak characters, weak story, weak kills. D+

Scream 3 (2000)

A really really dumb script fails this one but there’s still some good stuff with the nightmare sequences. I wish they put some effort in the kills, though. C-

Scream (1996)

The meta elements are starting to annoy me more than they did previously, but there’s a lot of good here. Dewey is one of my all-time favorite horror movie characters. B

Scream (1996)

At this point I’ve seen this movie enough to have it memorized, start to finish. It’s interest in the whodunnit aspects tend to kill any kind of character arc they were going for with Sidney (the Maureen Prescott backstory is so briefly touched upon it makes this movie almost feel like a sequel with obligatory audience catch-up exposition as opposed to real exposition) but since I think Neve Campbell is a pretty boring actor, that works for me. All the other parts I love (Dewey, kitchen scene, opening) I still love and all the other parts I hate (smugness, boring kills, bathroom scene) I really hate. Still a fan. B