The 4th review overall!
I had a difficult time trying to find a movie for tonight. I was leaning towards "The Horde" but shied away from it because I had a feeling that the action part of action horror would be emphasized and I wanted a straight horror. So I harassed a few former coworkers with an opening line of, "Hey, you like things right?" Which eventually led to me asking them about what to watch on the Netflix.
THE Anderson suggested Halloween H2O, (Two men walk into a bar. The first says, "I'll have some H2O." The second one says, "I'll have some H2O too." Then he dies.) but I saw Halloween Resurrection and I kinda wanted to see Busta Rhymes' ridiculousness dressed as Michael Meyers "You're not supposed to be Michael Meyers, I'M Michael Meyers! But while browsing my queue I saw a movie that Netflix said was two minutes long. I was instantly intrigued and figured I could pull some tomfoolery by saying I was reviewing two movies tonight, then I saw it was starring Sam Neil, so I was doubly intrigued, next I saw it was rated R and I wondered, "How in the hell do you get a 2-minute movie an R rating?" Then, the opening credits went about a minute and a half long so I figured there was mess up somewhere. I was debating whether I should forget about it and pick Michael Meyers, but the name "John Carpenter" flashed on the screen so I decided that I would watch...
In The Mouth of Madness (1994)
This movie is weird, this movie is disturbing, this movie is fucked up, this movie is scary, and this might be the best horror movie I watch this whole month. The gist of the story has Sam Neil (You have a T-Rex?) as a freelance insurance investigator who is very logical blah blah. He is hired by a publishing company to find their writer whose books tend to... I guess mess people up. He ends up tracking down the guy to the fictional place that he writes about, think of it as stumbling into Castle Rock and finding Stephen King out of his mind.
The whole movie is FULL of disturbing and unsettling images, people, and the town itself. The movie has plenty of pop out scares, but what sets this apart is everything in this movie is scary. It's not like Scream or Dead Space where the scares are all generated through, "OH EM GEE LOOK AT ME I'M A MONSTER JUMPING OUT AT YOU BOOOO!" Some of the scariest scenes are with characters standing there without anything jumping out. Case in point, the lady who went with Sam Neil is walking to the church which in the books is usually where the evil begins, and while walking a rubber bouncy ball gets tossed to her offscreen. When she turns around there's a group of children standing with deformed faces staring at her. They start saying creepy things then a little girl with very sharp teeth says, "You're my mommy. Know what today is? Today is Mommy's Day."
This movie is really, really good. The entire atmosphere surrounding the town is probably the creepiest I've seen in a movie, and it's probably the scariest movie I've seen in a long time. My favorite thing about the movie is Sam Neil's constant attempt to stay rational/sane despite the world crumbling around him. I think my favorite scene has Neil sitting in a confessional as the writer who controls the world is in the one next to him. They're talking and Sam Neil is still trying to cling to reality tells him, "Your books suck."
In the context of the movie it is really funny, and I personally find it hilarious because considering the situation, I could see myself saying the same thing. This movie is damn good, and I highly suggest you give it a shot.
So I'm really debating on giving this movie 10 Dr. Chainsaws. I think a 10 should be for a great movie, but maybe I overrated Child's Play by giving it a 9. This was better than Child's Play by more than just a .5 so I could either go back and change Child's Play and do all that extra work or I could give the movie a 10 and be done with it. You know what? Screw it, this movie gets a 10 because it scared me with more than pop outs or cat scares. In The Mouth Of Madness, thank you.