I had an interesting time with this Movie. I mean book. I mean author.
In 2014 I was doing the merchandise swag for World Horror Convention in Portland. I had done sway for about 7 of them. I was also running Horror-Web. I had acquired an advanced reader copy of Bird Box and was holding it waiting to cross a street when the person next to me said “Good book.” Took me a second to recall what I was holding, as I began explaining, the person introduced themselves as the writer. Which was a fantastic moment for me. I loved the book and his follow up ones, as well as his music.
And then a movie was made!
This is such a tension filled story, and they did an absolute banger of a job adapting it. If you haven’t seen it, do so. Now. I’ll wait for you.
Was good, right? I told you so.
The basics of the story is that there are some sort of creatures that have made their presence known in the world. And if you see them, you will go insane. And kill yourself.
I honestly don’t know what more to say about this. Great book. Great movie. I’m going to give this a 10, and I want to qualify that. This project is going to be me choosing movies. With that in mind, every movie I choose is going to be one I deeply connect with. So expect a lot of high rating movies during this.
I got this as part of a horror film festival I was part of. And I am so thrilled to have come across it.
The setting is a world where movie monsters exist. Freddy. Jason. All of them. And our main character Leslie Vernon wants to become the next big thing. We also have a college film crew documenting it. They are wanting to do a documentary about his journey.
And this brings up a fantastic journalistic concept. If you are documenting something and don’t intervene, are you an accessory? Leslie Vernon is detailing his plans. Introduces (from afar) the crew to the one who will be his final girl. Explains everything to them. Leading to the crew having the ethics discussion.
But that’s only the first half of the movie. The set up. The second half he dons the mask and we go from documentary to horror movie.
For over ten years now there has been talk and desire to do a sequel to this. And I would love to see one. But it is yet to happen, and as the years tick away, it becomes less likely. Which is sad. Behind the Mask is a solid 10 of a movie. And a second one would likely fall short of that mark. Because he would be established, so the documentary part wouldn’t exist. It would just be a horror movie. I still want it.
For my subtitled entry here I have to do Battle Royale. If you haven’t seen it, it will feel cliche to you. Because Hunger Games and many other books and movies have done this sort of story. But this was so good.
The story deals with a recent Japanese program to curb teen hooliganism. A random high school class is sent to an island with weapons and 3 days to engage in a last man standing bloodbath.
This was in 2000 and like I said, it spawned a new genre. But you owe it to yourself to check out the movie that spawned that genre. A really good movie with a sequel that tarnished the story. I’d still give this a 9. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to rewatch it before typing this up. With having three movies for each letter, it’s going to be impossible for me to watch them all again. As these aren’t official reviews though, I am giving myself some slack on that front.
Cthulhuville 