English Dept.
In Extra Ordinary, the characters are all losers in the truest sense. They're mostly unlucky people. They've experienced loss. Everybody is looking for something. But I think it's a rare cinema experience that kind of makes me feel in every scene, if not every frame, compelled to either laugh out loud or get a little misty with truly happy tears.
The Legend of Hell House, or as I like to call it, Florence and the Machine, it's like a charming little Christmas movie. And it has an uncredited appearance by Michael Gough as Emeric Belasco, who effectively serves to pull Hell House into a lineage of Hammer and Amicus horror pictures that have brought us up to the point at which this was released. But this is, I think, very different from those films.
Sinister is, ostensibly, an occult crime story. It is set in Pennsylvania, where I come from, though not in a real place in Pennsylvania; but I find it to be a taut, muscular, visceral fright fest. It requires no deep thinking or excavation. It is a scary, scary movie, perfect vintage Blumhouse at the height of its ethos and power: spend a very small amount of money and maximize every dollar's worth of scare.
I think Talk to Me is kind of the story of Regan MacNeil if she chatted up Captain Howdy using W. W. Jacobs' monkey's paw. I think it fits squarely into the “teens fuck around with the paranormal and get fucked by the paranormal” subgenre, which isn't really a thing, but it might as well be. Of course, in these films, teenagers apparently live in a world bereft of horror films, as they seem to know nothing about the concept of playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
