Hellraiser Retrospective is Up!

Hello ghosts and ghouls, this is going to be a very quick post...
As all of you know, I'm absolutely obsessed with Hellraiser. It's been my favorite horror franchise for a number of years now, and honestly the obsession has never really died down even slightly.

To commemorate my love of the greatest horror franchise, my newest video is a retrospective of all 9 films!
Click the link below to check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIptMohva4

Let me know which of the Hellraiser films is your favorite, and which franchise you'd like to see me do this with next!

All Hallows' Eve Review

When you think of Halloween, what's the first thing that comes to mind? For me, it's trick-or-treating in costume while the wind rustles the leaves on the trees as you walk down the street, your costume shoes stomping on the leaves that have already fallen and you hear that satisfying crunch...-sigh-

Naturally, I love all films that revolve around October 31st. Trick 'r Treat is classic, and is in my top 5 favorite horror films of all time. Halloween doesn't get much more iconic. So when I heard about All Hallows' Eve (2013), I said "oh, I'm probably going to love this one!"

                                            photo from screamhorrormag.com


All Hallows' Eve tells the story of a babysitter and the two bratty kids she's watching after their Halloween festivities. They've been trick-or-treating and the night is rapidly coming to a close. The children are sitting around watching movies when Sarah (the babysitter) ushers them to bed. But the bratty brother finds a VHS tape in his trick-or-treat bag (uh...what?) and insists on playing it. After thoroughly disturbing themselves by watching a psychotic clown named Art become the ringleader to the "terror" on the tape, Sarah is left in the house alone while the children sleep. Is someone there with her?

Okay, you guys. I'm not going to lie, I went into this film with insanely high expectations because you all know how much I love, love, LOVE killer clowns. Pennywise is my man, Twisty is my BFF...any evil clown I can find, I will watch and devour with my eyeballs. I'm not scared of clowns, I just adore them. Don't ask me why.

Anyway, I'd heard about this one before, and I saw Art and thought "alright, this is right up my alley, let's go for it!" and then never got around to watching it. Cut to last night, and I was jumping for joy when I found out my friend had it on DVD. Popped it in, and I let the excitement commence...

Except it never came. This actually may be one of the worst films I've ever watched. There's no plot, and what the film lacks in plot, it only slightly makes up for it in gore. Sort of.

You get to see a baby cut out of a woman, and there are "creepy" aliens with noodle arms, but the whole process of getting to the points that are supposed to scare you are unnecessary, kind of annoying, drawn out, and really boring. The VHS itself is cool, it's almost like an anthology but it doesn't make any sense and it never comes together at the end, but nonetheless, it's the easiest part of the film to watch, besides Art.

Art is AWESOME. He's weird, disturbing, and he's very present. He's never lurking in the shadows, he's right in your face (except for the "second film" where he's kind of just a painting).

If you're looking for a good, classic Halloween film, skip over this one and move on to something more sophisticated like Trick 'r Treat. It's essentially the same, but done better.

This one gets a 3.5/10. Womp womp.

Do you guys have any great film suggestions for me? Let me know! Email me at taylorterriblehorror@gmail.com!

Alright guys, tomorrow is my birthday so I'm taking a trip to Sleepy Hollow. I'll let you know how it goes!!

Until next time, stay spooky <3
Taylor Terrible

The Green Inferno: Review

I wanted to post this earlier, but I'm trying to keep my Tuesday posting schedule straight...but I was given the opportunity to see The Green Inferno on September 21st, and it was CRAZY, you guys.
Here's the trailer if you haven't already seen it:

I got the invite through Moviepilot.com, so I had the chance to go in as press, which was awesome in itself. We were checked in and sent up to the top floor of the Regal theater on Broadway in Union Square- the final stop on the Green Inferno fan appreciation tour.

Upon arrival, we were greeted with wine, soda, beers...the whole ordeal was kind of surreal. I felt like a modern-day-creepy-female-Gatsby. I was handed a glass of white wine and I was excited to mingle around with other horror lovers...and then Eli Roth walked out.

Roth and Lorenza Izzo (the star of the film) sat at a table to sign posters for fans and screeners. Naturally, I made a fool out of myself by standing there and staring, and making a joke about how the Red Band trailer made me need to stop eating my bacon, egg and cheese on a bagel. But really, if your film can stop me from eating, it's intense. I eat a lot.

We were slowly filtered into the theater, and once everyone was seated, we were introduced to Eli and Lorenza again, along with the producer of the film, Nicolás López.
The film was deliciously disgusting, incredibly gory, and at one point I felt the wine roiling in my stomach, trying to make its way back out of my throat. BUT I persevered and held it down, and from the particular scene (eye-gauging, tongue-extracting and bone-cutting) on, I was okay. Mostly.
I did have to tell myself to breathe quite a few times because I caught myself holding my breath. I also started craving chicken tenders at one point, so I don't know what kind of person that makes me.

It's incredibly graphic, though. Roth told us at the beginning of the screening that he was trying to make the most violent film ever created. I think he succeeded...and surpassed anything that will be made for a long, long time. 
Also, fun fact, the tribe that he filmed with had no idea what electricity was, so the crew brought a television and a generator and showed the tribe Cannibal Holocaust and they though it was some kind of hilarious joke, and that's when they agreed to portray greedy, crazy cannibal people. 

Anyway, I don't want to give too much away, but the film is insane and beautiful and awesome. I highly, highly suggest it for anyone looking to be grossed out, thrilled, horrified, or all of the above.

Giving this film a rating out of 10, I give it an 8.5!! Make sure you check it out; it'll be in theaters on September 25th!

The Gallows (2015) Review

Assuming the best, I purchased my ticket early and made the decision to go see The Gallows with a group of friends on the night of its release.
Sitting in a theater full of too-young-kids that probably snuck in, and guys yelling about how many girls they got laid by that week, I realized the kind of group that this film attracted: "I think I like horror so I came to see this lame movie".
I guess I gave away on my opinion in that last sentence, but we'll get into that.

The Gallows is a story of a group of high schoolers that get trapped inside their school one night while trying to dismantle the set of the school's play, because the lead (a football player) doesn't want to be a part of the play anymore. While they're inside the school, the play's previous lead (who died in a freak accident during the show- he was hanged on stage) comes back to haunt them.

So back to my review of the film: it was awful. It was so bad. If I could take back that hour and 20 minutes of my life, I would gladly do it. I'll explain...
It was an almost-found-footage kind of film. It was all shown through the video camera that one of the characters is carrying around, conveniently documenting everything that goes on. I guess to keep with the theme of having an irresponsible kid holding the camera, the shots are awful, shaky, and nauseating. The camera is CONSTANTLY moving and blurring and cutting in and out, to the point where I actually had to cover my eyes to keep from feeling like I had vertigo. In relation to it being found footage: I am so tired of found footage horror films. It seems like that's all there is lately; it's a cop-out in my opinion because rather than making things truly scary, you minimize what the audience sees by using a video camera. It's lame. It's so, so lame.
Anyway, the acting is fine, I never really felt like the acting was cheesy at any point, however the characters were pretty bad. There was the jock, the theater nerd, the cheerleader, and the football-player-turned-lead-in-school-play. Cliche. Nothing special about a single one of them.

As for the film itself: it was an hour and 20 minutes of awful, unnecessary jump scares and loud noises. I was playing with my melted chocolate bar in the wrapper more than I was watching the film because I was so bored (and nauseous because of the camera). Some jump scares didn't even have anything to do with the "scarier" parts of the film, they were literally just fillers.
The twist at the end was pretty okay- I'll give it that much. I enjoyed how unexpected it was, but even that wasn't done well.

So I guess that was my awful, scathing review of The Gallows. If you want to save yourself some money and time, don't go watch this film. If you have nothing to do and you really want to torture yourself, hey, feel free.

...but really, don't see it.

Until next time, guys! Sorry this review sounded so angry, it was just honestly one of the worst films I've ever seen. :P

We Are Still Here: Review

I recently watched the 2015 film We Are Still Here as per the recommendation of a handful of super excited people. I'd been hearing good things all week, so I told myself, "hey, I'll save this one for a rainy day and it'll be awesome!"

Cut to about two days later...there was a beautiful thunderstorm here in New York and I was so excited to snuggle up burrito-style and turn this flick on.
With the thunder and lightning in the background, I flipped this one on and got myself ready to be terrified.
The story is about a small town that a middle-aged couple moves to after the tragic death of their son. When things start to get a little weird in the house, the couple realizes that there may be someone their besides their beloved Bobby...so they call upon their "psychic" friend to check the house out with her boyfriend.

Things start to go downhill early on, giving you little bits of suspense here and there right off the bat. I feel like things are very stop-and-go; a lot of the suspense and jump scares happen very abruptly and they're kind of expected.
I have to say, the story itself is good. It's a pretty typical house-haunting-type film, but the story of the house and the history is fun.
The characters are really well-written, however the casting left a lot to be desired. I found the acting really cheesy to the point where I was having a hard time getting into the story.
The entities floating around the house getting crabby and nasty were pretty terrifying. I won't get too far into where they come from or what their deal is because it's very well-explained in the film, but what you should know is that two of them are kids, which is one of the things that freaks me out the most. Ick.

Overall, I liked the film. Maybe not enough to watch it again, but I do recommend it as a film that you check out at least once so you can join in on the conversation about it!
I give it a 6/10, a little better than halfway there but the acting really ruined it for me. The entities and the deaths are what got the rating up there for me...if you guys enjoy gore like I do, this one has PLENTY. I promise, it doesn't start off too gory, but once you get a little ways in...BAM. Body parts flying everywhere. Thumbs up on that for me.

Happy haunting, my spookies...let me know what you think of We Are Still Here!
Taylor Terrible <3