I finished up my first week back of work after vacation and it went pretty smoothly. But I got some terrible news last night. President Baby said he didn't like my beard! I gave him a goodnight kiss and he said my spikes hurt! Dear responded with, "See?!" I may have to do some soul searching... But before I get too into the weeds, let's talk about...
Don't Listen (2020)
This is a Spanish horror movie and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize I was watching dubbed audio. I had the subtitles on because Dear and President Baby were sleeping and I didn't want to wake them. I subjected my old roommate, Peter, to an October of blood-curdling screams while he was trying to sleep, and I don't want to do that to my wife and son! Anyway, it was later in the movie when I realized the dialogue wasn't matching the words I was hearing. Then I realized the words weren't matching their lips. After a quick look, I realized this was a foreign movie and I was watching an English dub!
A family moves into an old house with the intention of fixing it up and flipping it. Unfortunately for them, they picked the worst house possible. This one has a dark and sordid past. A witch was tortured and then left to die in a gibbet. If she was testy in real life, she was even worse in death. Since then, every person who has moved into the house was met with tragedy.
The movie is called Don't Listen because the witch can get into your head, making you see, hear and do things you wouldn't want to do. The longer the movie goes things, keep getting worse for the kid. He's having conversations through his electronics and we're only hearing one side of it. Later in the movie, the father asks his son, "Were you talking on the radio last night?"
The son answers that he was. The dad then asked him who he was talking to. The boy responds, "You."
I got chills at the scene, especially when we learned that the boy said his dad told him he hates him over the radio. A short time later we find the boy face down in the pool, dead. Then when the movie gets to the twist later, it is especially heartbreaking when you think of what must have been going through that kid's mind right before he died. I'm getting sad just thinking about it. It's one of the more effective deaths I remember seeing in a horror movie. The father eventually turns to a parapsychologist and the man brings along his daughter, a skeptic sound engineer to investigate.
This movie is really good! I can't imagine I'll watch anything scarier this month. We don't see much of the witch, it's mainly just her feet but holy crap those moments are so damn scary. You see, the witch isn't satisfied with killing the boy, she has designs for the whole family. She's luring them this way and that and using their son's voice to do it. The mom goes into his old room and that's where the movie ramps up the tension and terror. If I do have one complaint, it's this scene. It's the scariest moment in the movie, but it relies on the mother not just "noping" out of the room when everything tells her to. She keeps going back to check on something when you're practically screaming at her to leave. She doesn't listen, and obviously, pays the price. It's plot-induced stupidity, but I'm going to let it slide because it's a wonderfully tense and scary scene.
Unlike Against the Night, I don't want to talk about spoilers, but the ending to this one, whooo boy. The amount of suffering the father went through in dealing with the witch, and then he realizes what she had him do without him realizing it is so damn sad. I like to point out how foreign films love their downer endings, but I can't give that criticism to this movie. A lot of them are just, "You think you won, huh? Sike! Guess who is hiding under your bed right now!" This ending is 100% earned.
I can't judge the acting because ultimately what I was hearing were voice actors, but their expressions were on point. The father carried the weight of the world and it was all over his face once his son died. It seemed his life ended when his son died and he needed to be rid of the witch. But I will say, everything that I notice in movies was great in this one. It was terrifying. The scares were well done, the characters were mostly likable, the atmosphere is extremely tense and it takes you on a ride!
9 Dr. Chainsaws!
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