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Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest 1995 ★★
Before anything: Credit where credit is due: it has some decent imagery in one or two scenes.
But "luckily", that's outweighed by a solid helping of silliness. And there's more than enough of it to, at the same time, keep it enjoyable and entertaining and yet far away from genuinely scarely.
The highlight being the suitably goofy finale with He who walks behind the rows and Eli attacking his "brother" with the Kamehame-meh.
For a night when you are nicely baked and looking for something to chuckle at.
Talk to Me 2022 ★★★★
In the past 20 years, Aussie horror has in my opinion built up a olsid reputation, what with titles like Wolf Creek, The Tunnel, The Babadook, Lake Mungo,...Now we can add Talk to me to that list.
The opening immediately has you covered. A guy wonders into a party (Aussie kids sure party a lot) in order to find his brother who seems in some sort of trouble. And it... all... goes... wrong... big time. Before you can say “what the hell”, we are left with two wounded bodies and a crowd dispersing in total panic. Solid opening.
Cut to our main protagonists. And credit where credit is due, they are well written. Mia and Jade and the others are not part of the cheap snark fests that plagued the 2000s, making for believable friends who just happen to get into all sorts of shenanigans. As young people do. But behind their tough and cool exterior, even the kids who provide the party trick have some good in them.
What is said trick? Trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible, it's a type of handshake and a quote that leads into a combination of some sort drug trip and an epileptic episode. A person who never moved beyond mellow trippy weed can not really see the fun in that (though he can see the solid jump scares and the amazing effects), but apparently, it seems to be the greatest thing ever since they all want a go at it. With one of them even French kissing a pitbull like dog in the process. And for the record that's the comic relief part.
Then, of course, it goes wrong at a point where a character does that typical horror movie stupid shit. Resulting in the main character Mia being shunned by both her best friend and Jade's Mother, played by Miranda Otto – who apparently played Tom Cruise's ex-wife in that awful War of the worlds remake #TheMoreYouKnow. She then tries to find a solution and right the wrong she caused. First alone and then with the help of her friends.
That's where the movie really picks up in the scariness. Because throughout all of this, you start wondering who the spirits are really after and wether or not they are playing the long game with one of the characters (and probably winning in the end). Trying to avoid spoilers, so not getting into details, but I am pretty sure that I can pinpoint the moment where Quentin Tarantino gave this movie four stars.
Solid horror efforts. For people who prefer solid scary cinema over a happy ending.
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