Screaming Sunday - Doctor Sleep

Rating - 71/100
Plot:  Years following the events of "The Shining," a now-adult Dan Torrance meets a young girl with similar powers as he tries to protect her from a cult known as The True Knot who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.
The heroes: Grown up Danny Torrance and a capable little girl named Abra.
The antagonists: Child murderers led by Rose the Hat, played by amazing Rebecca Ferguson.
What makes it so great? While I didn't like this movie as much as a lot of people did, this is definitely the most competently made Stephen King's adaption in 2019. In the Tall Grass was awful, Pet Semetery was dumb as hell and, while very entertaining, It: Chapter Two is a chaotic mess. But this right here is a proper movie, with decent script, character work and editing.

Screaming Sunday - Eli

Movie rating: 63/100
Plot:  A boy receiving treatment for his auto-immune disorder discovers that the house he's living in isn't as safe as he thought.
The heroes: Eli, a boy who may be on his way to getting cured...or murdered.
The antagonists: Ghosts? Doctors? His parents?
Best scene: The last 15 minutes, which are very surprising.
Oh-oh something's not right line: The decontamination chamber is our only way in or out.
What makes it so great? This had the advantage of me watching it directly after Wounds, another horror film that landed on Netflix last Friday. While Wounds was terrible, Eli is quite a decent horror flick with really crazy last act and I always love it when films are at its strongest just before the ending. It also has pretty great cast - Kelly Reilly and Lili Taylor are here, along with Sadie Sink who plays Max on Stranger Things. Sink plays the character here exactly the same way she plays Max, but it's cool to see her outside the show. The film is nothing tremendously unique but it is worth watching for the last few scenes alone.

Screaming Sunday - Ready or Not

Movie rating: 93/100
Plot:  A bride's wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game.
The heroes: One very unlucky but brave and capable bride.
The antagonists: Her in-laws.
Best scene: The ending.
Oh-oh something's not right line: You'll have to hide better than that.
What makes it so great? Boy, between this, Us and Parasite the rich are really getting quite the beating this year, huh? This is the most entertaining and creative horror film since The Cabin in the Woods and the most surprising horror script since Get Out. It's hilarious, twisted and so much fun. At 90 minutes run time it's a really engaging movie and Samara Weaving's Grace is a fantastic heroine - resourceful, brave, funny and relatable.

Screaming Sunday - Crawl

Movie rating: 79/100
Plot:  Against all logic, the competitive swimmer, Haley (Kaya Scodelario), drives into the mouth of a furiously destructive Category 5 hurricane on a collision course with her hometown of Florida, to check in on her estranged father, Dave (Berry Pepper). There, in their weather-beaten house amid a rapidly sinking and alligator-infested town, Haley and her father find themselves trapped in the labyrinthine mess of their flooded crawl space, where a merciless pair of six-metre predators is silently stalking them. Now--as Haley and Dave are gasping for air in the claustrophobic basement--only their will to survive can help them stand a chance against the scaly adversaries' powerful jaws. Can they escape without getting eaten alive?
The heroes: A girl, her father and his dog.
The antagonists: Bloodthirsty alligators. And seriously, the Hargans and Pennywise have nothing on those toothy motherfuckers. They are savage.
Best scene: Honestly the whole movie is a bit over 80 minutes long and it's a series of exciting and very well done scenes.
Oh-oh something's not right line: There's two of them!

5 reasons I'm really hyped for "It: Chapter Two"

We are now 33 days away from the release of It Chapter Two. Having just rewatched the first movie yesterday and having seen Jade the Orient scene just now, that screened last night along with the re-release of the first movie in USA (as always fuck the rest of the world, right? God bless helpful redditors who uploaded it there) I'm very excited. I'm rooting for this movie to beat the record set by the first one. It's a horror film backed by a major studio, with big budget (and you can really see that budget, the production design alone is lovely) and with a runtime of over 2 hours and 40 minutes. I want it to make so much money and I want it to be good and from the looks of it, it will be

Screaming Sunday - Child's Play

Movie rating: 52/100
Plot: A mother gives her 13-year-old son a toy doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature.
The heroes: The kids, because it's the cool thing these days to have the children battle the horror antagonist. After all, It is the most successful horror film in history.
The antagonists: That one disgruntled employee.
Best scene: The reveal of what Chucky did to the world's crappiest boyfriend.
Oh-oh something's not right line:  Did you say Chucky?
What makes it so great? This is not a great movie but it's much better than I expected it to be after its lazy, disgusting and quite frankly hugely unprofessional marketing campaign with Chucky murdering Toy Story characters. The film is much more fun than other recent horror films - I am looking at you, Brightburn - and it is surprisingly emotional. Granted I always feel for CGI characters, but I was genuinely surprised how much I empathized with Chucky, This whole situation happened because of someone messing up his programming and all he wanted was to be a good friend. There's also plenty of humor here and the actors do a really great job - Aubrey Plaza somehow sells being somebody's mom, Gabriel Bateman is really good as Andy and Brian Tyree Henry provides a lot of comic relief.

Screaming Sunday - Ma

Movie rating: 72 /100
Plot: A lonely woman befriends a group of teenagers and decides to let them party at her house. Just when the kids think their luck couldn't get any better, things start happening that make them question the intention of their host.
The heroes: A bunch of teenagers who just want to drink and party.
The antagonists: Ma, played flawlessly by the great Octavia Spencer.
Best scene: It's hard to choose because every single time Ma is on the screen the film is so much fun.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Strip.
What makes it so great? This is trashy, pulpy fun. The script is absolutely atrocious - at various points the teenagers are like "we are not going there anymore" and the very next scene is them partying at Ma's house - but Octavia Spencer's delicious performance makes it worth watching. While the gore is never too crazy and the teenage characters are quite bland, Juliette Lewis, Luke Evans and Allison Janney (in cameo performance) deliver pretty great work. But the movie belongs to Spencer, which is only fitting, since even though she got her Oscar years ago, this is her first leading role.

Screaming Sunday: The Perfection

Movie rating: 73/100
Plot:  When troubled musical prodigy Charlotte (Allison Williams) seeks out Elizabeth (Logan Browning), the new star pupil of her former school, the encounter sends both musicians down a sinister path with shocking consequences.
The heroes: Here's the thing with this movie - the heroes change as the film progresses....
The antagonists: ....and it's the same with the antagonists.
Best scene: The chilling, gruesome ending. I love when a horror/thriller film ends either with an earned twist or macabre ending and this one was a very cool example of the latter.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Not a line, but when you see Charlotte briefly turn into her younger self and she is screaming in the very first scene of the movie.

Screaming Sunday: It: Chapter One

Movie rating - 74/100
Plot: In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town.
The heroes: A group of adorable children.
The antagonists: An evil entity that takes many forms.
Best scene: The opening sequence.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Take it, Georgie.
What makes it so great? While the film doesn't blend the two genres too well - one being a story about kids growing up in a terrible town, the other a horror movie - it is one of the most entertaining horror films released in the last few years. The film went on to earn an incredible 700 million dollars worldwide, making it the highest grossing horror movie of all time and I have no doubt that Chapter Two, to be released in less than 4 months from now, is going to do even better than that, especially given its amazing first trailer that was released this week.

Screaming Sunday: 10 best horror films since 2010

We are witnessing a wonderful time for horror movies. It seems like every year there are several that cause a lot of excitement and end up being very worthy inclusions to the "best of" horror genre. With Us, a movie which I thought was executed wonderfully but the writing was mediocre, getting a lot of attention I thought I'd list the 10 best horror films released since 2010. Here we go:

Screaming Sunday: The Haunting of Hill House

Rating - 94/100
Plot:  Explores a group of siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country. Now adults, and forced back together in the face of tragedy, the family must finally confront the ghosts of their past, some of which still lurk in their minds while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.
The heroes: The Crain family.
The antagonists: The inevitably of death. I shit you not, that's basically the antagonist.
What makes it so great? The Haunting of Hill is not only the greatest thing TV or cinema has to offer in the month of Halloween but one of the Netflix finest shows to date. But what it is first and foremost is one of the greatest horrors in recent memory. We are in renaissance of horror lately. We have The VVitch, Hereditary, It Follows. But we haven't really got a ghost story in a very long time. The antagonists in all of the above were evil forces that the audience had no sympathy or even understanding for. There was still a touch of humanity there - Thomasin caring for her siblings, Annie waling after her daughter. But the most gigantic horror franchise currently is The Conjuring franchise featuring one dimensional demonic antagonists. But The Haunting of the Hill House does something that is done very rarely - we fear seeing the ghosts in it even though we feel sympathy for them.

Screaming Sunday - Mandy

Movie rating - 84/100
Plot: A psychodelic tale of a quiet logger named Red (Nicolas Cage) who lives a life of serenity with his wife Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), in their dream cabin in the woods. But when the leader of a deranged cult (Linus Roache, who played Batman's dad in Batman Begins and I cannot stop being shocked by it after seeing Mandy) becomes enamored with Red's wife, he and his people terrorize the couple, leaving Red spiraling into madness.The psychodelic goes full grindhouse as Red, armed with a battle axe and any drugs he can find, goes on a violent rampage, enacting his revenge on the cult in the most gruesome ways.
The heroes: Nicolas Cage forging a battle axe as he is wearing sunglasses and a T-shirt.

The Nun

(spoilers!)

The Nun is the fifth entry in The Conjuring universe and unfortunately it's the biggest disappointment in it yet. While not quite awful as the first Annabelle movie, the film is disjointed, boring and makes very little sense. In truth the only people who should pray for forgiveness here are director Corin Hardy and whoever did the rewrites on the promising script.

Screaming Sunday - Hereditary

Movie rating - 81/100
Plot:  When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter's family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry.
The heroes: Graham family, trying to figure out just what the hell is happening.
The antagonists: Among others the sound Charlie makes which you will not be able to unhear.
Best scene: It involves a car.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Who is going to take care of me when you die?
What makes it so great? There are multiple scenes where something frightening is on the screen but there is no 'look!' signal from the director. No loud music. No zoom. Nothing that would happen in 9 out of 10 other horror films out there to draw your attention to the nightmarish element of the shot.

Screaming Sunday - Bone Tomahawk

Movie rating - 85/100
Plot:  In the Old West, a sheriff (Kurt Russell), his deputy (Richard Jenkins), a gunslinger (Matthew Fox),and a cowboy (Patrick Wilson) embark on a mission to rescue three people from a savage group of cave dwellers.
The heroes: Our brave rescue party of four (whoever gets that reference gets the rest of my Halloween candy).
The antagonists: The cannibalistic tribe of Indians, who are not only outnumbering our heroes but are also completely ruthless and have some sort of bone stuck in their throats so they can emit the call that is seriously creepy as fuck.
Best scene: The whole film is a string of best scenes, really.
Oh-oh something's not right line: You have no chance against any number of them.
What makes it so great? I am strangely not big a fan of western ever though my second favorite show of all time (Deadwood) and one of my all time favorite westerns (The Assassination of Jesse James) come from this genre. But I am a huge fan of horror. So when, as soon as this movie hit VOD, there were many raves and positive reviews for this and I saw it stars Richard Jenkins, an actor who simply never fails, I decided to watch it and what a good decision it was.

The film is a perfect blend of western and horror - it spends 3/4 of its running time following the western formula - letting us get familiar with the feel of the film, the location, the pace and most of all get used to and really like the main four heroes, who with no regard for the safety of their own, go on perhaps suicide mission to rescue the people taken by the enemy. There are no doubts whether they should go - they just go, which already makes us admire them for their bravery.

Screaming Sunday - The Voices

Movie rating - 72/100
Plot:  Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is that chipper guy clocking the nine-to-five at a bathtub factory, with the offbeat charm of anyone who could use a few friends. With the help of his court-appointed psychiatrist, he pursues his office crush (Gemma Arterton). However, the relationship takes a sudden, murderous turn after she stands him up for a date. Guided by his evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog, Jerry must decide whether to keep striving for normalcy, or indulge in a much more sinister path.
The heroes: Jerry, who is a really nice guy. He just happens to kill people sometimes. Accidentally, you know.
The antagonists: The cat? No, no. The antagonist here is as much the mental illness as it is the horrible solitude that Jerry faces on daily basis
Best scene: The chase and the first kill

Screaming Sunday - The Babadook

Movie rating - 80/100
Plot:  A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.
The heroes: The mother and her son. Or perhaps just her son?
The antagonists: The mysterious Babadook
Best scene: It's hard to choose just one in the film so consistent but I'd choose the scene where Amelia gets the book back...with certain creepy additions to it.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Don't let him in.
What makes it so great? This film is easily one of the best and smartest horror films of the last few years - it's not quite as entertaining as Orphan or The Conjuring but it's very psychologically complex, brilliantly acted and executed. The film's best element is the script which much like for example Black Swan is showing the events almost completely from subjective perspective leaving a lot of room for theories and interpretations.

Screaming Sunday - Honeymoon

Movie rating - 73/100
Plot:  Young newlyweds Paul (Penny Dreadful's Harry Treadaway) and Bea (Game of Thrones' Rose Leslie) travel to remote lake country for their honeymoon. Shortly after arriving, Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night. As she becomes more distant and her behavior increasingly peculiar, Paul begins to suspect something more sinister than sleepwalking took place in the woods.
The heroes: Paul, who is trying to figure out what happened to his beloved wife.
The antagonists: Something bad in the woods.
Best scene: The chilling scene on the lake near the end.
Oh-oh something's not right line: She's not being herself today.
What makes it so great? The film is genuinely scary - it has a very tense, creepy atmosphere, terrific suspense building up throughout the entire movie and so far it's the best horror film of the year.

Screaming Sunday - Dead Silence

Sati's movie rating - 74/100
Plot:  Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) comes home to find his wife Lisa disfigured and dead in their apartment just minutes after a mysterious, not to mention creepy, package was left on their doorstep containing an old ventriloquist dummy. With no alibi, a detective is left to assume Jamie as the prime suspect. Driven by an old ghost story, Jamie returns to Ravens Fair, his old hometown to prove his innocence.
The heroes: Ladies and gentlemen, it's Jason Stackhouse!
The antagonists: Ventriloquist dummies and one scary, freaky, awesome villain that controls them.
Best scene: The first night Jaime spends in a motel.
Oh-oh something's not right line: If you go looking for answers, you just might find them.
Morbid Trivia: During the climax, in the storage area with all 101 dolls, you can see Jigsaw's doll from the "Saw" films sitting on the floor, and Edgar Bergen's doll Charlie McCarthy on one of the shelves. The doll that Detective Lipton throws over his shoulder in this scene is a replica of ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson's doll, Danny O'Day. Fun fact #2 - watch out for Jigsaw doll in Warrens' special room with hunted objects in The Conjuring.

Screaming Sunday - Evil Dead

Sati's movie rating - 65/100
Plot:  David, his drug-using sister Mia and his friends Eric, Olivia and Natalie travel to an isolated cabin that belonged to his parents to spend a couple of days together. Mia promises to stop using drugs and Olivia, who is a nurse, promises to help Mia in her abstinence. They discover a hidden basement with witchcraft and the Book of the Dead, and Eric reads it and unintentionally summons an evil force. Mia, Olivia and Natalie are possessed by evil and Eric reads the book trying to learn how to destroy the demon.
The heroes: Bunch of young people in the woods with protagonist Mia who is a drug addict.
The antagonists: Demon from hell.