In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Saturday Night Séance.

Last weekend, it was time to once again head out to High Park for another one of Serena’s famed movie nights, this one centered around flicks involving all manner of demonic possession.

First up was Scream Dream, an old 1989 shot-on-video ditty that Serena had been talking up for the last little while. And by talking up, I mean in a OMFG-you-have-to-see-this-piece-of-shit kind of way. Transferred from Betamax, Scream Dream is certainly… something. If you are familiar with the SOV “classics” that crowded video store shelves in the eighties, then you kind of know what to expect. Surprisingly, extended sequences from a metal concert – that looked like they were shot in someone's basement – and demonically possessed sock puppets were not enough to keep my interest. It is more likely that someone had the great idea to film a half-naked blonde getting chainsawed in the vag and built a movie around it.


I'd love to serve up a trailer, but I couldn't find one. Considering how little there actually is about this flick online, one wonders if it would've disappeared completely if not for SRS Cinema throwing it on a disc. I guess we have them to “thank” for that. From eighties hair & pseudo-metal, we moved onto something a little more recent with Night of the Cleavage-- Demons! Demons, I meant to say demons, the Night of the Demons remake.


I feel we kinda already got a remake for this movie with 2000’s The Convent, but here it is whether you want it or not. Director Adam Gierasch offers up a serviceable redo with smatterings of gore and empty fun. Even though it slightly overstays its welcome, I found it hard to dislike a film that's populated with as many lovely ladies as this one was. If I needed anyone beyond Monica Keena to hold my attention, there's also Shannon Elizabeth, Bobbi Sue Luther and Diora Baird, all wearing Halloween outfits so tight, they looked like they might give way at any moment.

God Day-am!

And I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Miss Laird for re-enacting the famous Linnea Quigley lipstick scene from the original, even it did get a little messy there at the end. Speaking of Quigley, she turns up in a brief and revealing cameo, although I’m wondering whose idea it was – hers or Gierasch’s – to have her sticking her ass into the faces of a couple of ten-year-olds. Anyway, in contrast to Keena and company, you’ve got Eddie Furlong. What the fuck happened to this kid? It is depressing to see him like this, I mean look at the guy...


He makes the Culkins look like well adjusted darlings! It's just unfortunate, is all.

Last up, Serena threw in the 2002 British horror Long Time Dead. It was fine, but about fifteen minutes in I realized I’d seen it before, so how much of an impression could it have made, really?

So, that was my Saturday night. A tri-fecta of demon flicks, nice conversation and some hella good Devil’s food cake! Not a bad way to kill an evening, I'd say.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Don't Kill The Messenger 82

I'm still a little under the weather here, so I'll keep things brief this morning.

Another Bloody List.

Here's a link to a list of Ten Underrated Horror Movies from jeremyz of daily.likeme.net. While I find it hard to believe there is any fan out there worth their salt that hasn't revelled in the awesomeness of certain picks like [REC] and Night of the Creeps, there are some titles like Wrong Turn 2 & Behind The Mask that sadly haven't been seen by some. I can't speak for Otis or Carriers, but the rest of the flicks on the list are worth your attention. For the full list, click here.

Trailer #1.

Here is a Red-Band trailer for the upcoming Finnish horror comedy, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Frankly, this is a brilliant idea and the trailer below makes it look like a sack full of fun.



Trailer #2.

It looks like British blood brothers Adam Mason & Simon Boyes are finally nearing the end of the road with their ongoing project Luster. The two have talked at length on their podcast about the post-production challenges with achieving the right narrative bent, but it looks like they've finally conquered it, as a new trailer for the thriller starring Mason mainstay Andrew Howard appeared on Twitch this week. Here it is below.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

It Came From The Archives 7!

As you may have noticed, I've been fooling around with Windows Movie Maker over the last several weeks, so for this Archives post, I'm incorporating some video. Below, is footage taken circa 1992. My childhood bedroom was barely more than a glorified cubicle, as this was before the inevitable move down to the basement after high school, but I made do with what I had. Enjoy.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

R.I.P. Ingrid Pitt 1937-2010

Actress Ingrid Pitt passed away yesterday, two days after her seventy-third birthday. She was perhaps best known for her work with Hammer Films, including The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula. She was also an accomplished writer, having penned ten books, including The Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers and her autobiography Life's A Scream. Here below is a wondeful tribute to Pitt, courtesy of Youtube user Beowolfooo.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

I Love You, Pumpkin.

Last Thursday, the newest Syfy original with the best title I’ve heard in a while, Sharktopus played the Bloor.

A half-shark, half-octopus created by the military breaks free from its restraints and wreaks havoc along the coastline of a Mexican resort.

Oh, Sharktopus. It’s fun to say, and it was fun to watch. It’s not a good movie by any stretch, but my friends & I had a good time. Eric Roberts sure looked like he was having a blast soaking up the sun and drinking mass amounts of scotch, although his “relationship” with his daughter Nicole (Sara Malakul Lane) did get a little creepy at times.

"Uhh Daddy? Remember when we talked about personal space?"

Sharktopus was a damn sight better than Shark In Venice, as you actually got to see the creature advertised on the box. Sure, it's incredibly cheesy CGI, but I favour that over just flashing the same clips from National Geographic documentaries over and over again. The design of the Sharktopus is pretty cool and certainly the best so far of these digital creature features we’ve been inundated with over the last little while. For the most part, Sharktopus is just laughably entertaining. There is some joy to be had watching the characters fumble around, trying to stop the title abomination, especially considering the “hero” of the movie, Flynn (Kerem Bursin) is such a terrible marksman that he actually calls attention to it with the line,

“I been missing all day and I’m getting pretty tired of it.”

I think it probably had something to do with the effects guys not being on the same page with the dudes who hold out the tennis balls on set, because half the time Bursin wasn’t even shooting at the creature.

Like I said, laughable. But despite the random 24-style split-screening and Roger Corman’s eye-rolling cameo, I think the only real negative here is the lack of T&A. I understand Syfy distributed this, so that wasn’t in the cards, but in this type of movie, the absence of skin is pretty conspicuous. Although, after being treated to the R-rated goodness of Piranha 3D earlier this year, I guess I may be a little bit spoiled.

"Excuse me Miss, I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not naked."

These types of movies are often as much, if not more, about the gathering with friends for a communal experience, than the movie itself. Sharktopus is far from good, but I wager it was never supposed to be. My crew & I can certainly say we had a better time watching this than we did Skyline a few days before. It doesn’t matter how good your effects are, a bad movie is a bad movie. At least in this case, that crazy ol’ Carcharadon-Cephalopod kept us entertained.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Don't Kill The Messenger 81

Okay, let's get back on track here, I have such sights to show you.

Editing The Dead.

I found a cool little YouTube project this week called Editing The Dead. Because of George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead still being in the realm of public domain, an entity by the name of Werkbund, decided to re-work the footage in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure. Sure, it becomes more linear the farther in you get, but it's an awesome way to spend a few minutes. Check out the link below to give it a whirl.



Must Buy!

A friend of mine just told me about this amazing DVD set that released in the UK a few weeks ago. It's called Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide and boy is it a beauty.


It includes a new documentary by Jake West about the history of the Video Nasties, trailers for ALL of the seventy-two titles that appeared on that fateful list and tons of other goodies. There's over 13 HOURS of material spread over three discs! This is the kind of moral depravity this blog was built on! I hope to have this in my hands very soon, but I think the best way to demonstrate the awesomeness is to show you the trailer that had me drooling.



Trailer Reel.

Almost three years ago now, I first heard about a little movie called John Lechago's Bio-Slime. It seems that every once and a while, new info surfaces on it and then it disappears again. Just release the damn thing already!!! Here's the latest trailer for the newly renamed Contagion.



Around Halloween, Jon Watts & Christopher D. Ford made a faux trailer for a project they were writing called Clown, about a man who dons a clown costume for his kid's party, with sinister results. They inserted "from Master of Horror Eli Roth" into the trailer as a joke and it blew up online. Well, it looks like Roth liked what he saw and has now come on as producer. After this, and Jason Eisner's famous Grindhouse trailer Hobo With A Shotgun, making a faux trailer is becoming a legitimate way to get noticed. Good job, guys. Here below, is the Clown trailer that started it all.



Now if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'm going to pimp my own wares. I mentioned a while back that I worked on a film shot locally by some friends of mine. Well, it is finally in the can and ready to be unleashed. Here below is the first trailer for Android Re-Enactment. For more info, you can go to the official blog or Facebook page.



A Zoomba?

Lastly, I just wanted to throw up a cool pic from director James Gunn's Twitter Feed. He had the poster artwork from the Dawn of the Dead remake (which Gunn himself wrote) put on his Roomba vacuum robot.

Watch your feet!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

What Happened To Us?

Schwartz (of Cartoon & Horror) was over the other day and we were looking for something to watch before we headed out to the Pickering Flea Market – which was unfortunately a bust as the VHS vendors had been picked clean. He then remembered that I’d picked up a bootleg of Ed Hunt's The Brain at his behest during the Festival Of Fear. It had sat in the pile since August, so I was more than happy to give it a whirl.


Schwartz has championed this movie on a number of occasions and I can now see why, as I kind of heart it, as well. Shot in 1988, two towns over from my stomping grounds, this is classic eighties cheese. The Brain doesn’t waste anytime, showcasing the title creature almost immediately, as well as all manner of prothetics and practical effects. And, the teddy bear crying blood... Genius!

WANT!

I mean you just have to love these crusty Canadian horrors, especially the tax shelter flicks of the seventies & eighties. These were titles shot in the GTA by the likes of Ed Hunt & David Cronenberg among others, and all had a specific look that I love. The Brain just goes for it, lets the synth beats fly and when in doubt just inserts a chase scene. Seriously, there is so much running in this movie, I was almost out of breath after watching it. I know Canadian staple George Buza must have almost keeled over after shooting his scenes.



The Brain is chock full of gore set pieces and clearly Cronenberg’s Videodrome was an influence. The best thing is the Brain itself though, which gets so big by the end, they must have had to cart it around with a forklift. Oh, and courtesy of Christine Kossack, this movie gives us the nicest pair of breasts this side of Halloween II. And if that wasn’t enough, David Gale (of Re-Animator fame) shows up as the shifty motivational speaker Dr. Anthony Blakely. But the best, the best is what concludes the film.

So, The Brain is Jackass Zero, then?

I’m starting to realize that the tandem of Ed Hunt and writer Barry Pearson is a very favourable matchup. After the 2008 Trash Palace screening of Plague – at which Pearson was in attendance – and now The Brain, I think I must track down Bloody Birthday. Although if I remember rightly, Pearson himself may have advised against doing so during his Q&A. No matter. I love this stuff. The Brain is the movie I should have double-billed with Uninvited last month.

Like peanut butter & jam.

So, the question remains, what happened to us? Where is all the Canadian horror? Christ, when’s the last time Canada really made a splash in the genre? Ginger Snaps? Those movies were like a decade ago. Where are the Black Christmases, the Rituals, or even my Toronto-centric fave Deadly Eyes? I realize the financial climate isn’t anywhere near the same as it was back in the day, but come on, our best & brightest can’t all be heading south, surely! I'm exaggerating of course, as there have been some, but do Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Smash Cut and Splice really match up against titles like The Brood, Pin and The Changeling? I say not quite.

But enough with the soapboxing, I’ll leave you now with these Ed Hunt goodies. Note to self: Must see King of the Streets!







Oh, and if you'd like to read Schwartz's recent Cartoon & Horror post on The Brain, click here.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Nightmares On The Wall.

A fixture on my bedroom walls as a kid was Freddy. From about the age of twelve on, there would always be multiple visages of everyone's favourite burn-scarred child murderer awaiting anyone who dared to set foot in my humble abode. So, seeing as today is the twenty-sixth anniversary of the release of the first A Nightmare On Elm Street - and I need to continue posting my collection - here are the posters that are still in one piece.

I assume that one spent sometime on my door, judging from the notch cut into it to accomodate a doorknob.

I believe that was my first Freddy poster, which explains why it's the one with the most amount of wear.

I think Part 4 came out at the apex of my Freddy fandom, so that's the movie I have the most stuff from.

I did have a six-foot tall Freddy poster, but it seems to have irritatingly disappeared in the move to this location. I'll insert it later if it ever resurfaces.

I dig this poster a lot. Save for the original design below, it is probably my favourite.

Ah, the one that started it all. This one currently adorns the wall space above my DVD/Blu-ray shelves. It is the far left in a row of several other classics, but that is for a future installment.

I adore the art in that poster, I sometimes just find myself staring at it and admiring all the little details. And even after all that, I still didn't notice the little "Snakeman" put in there by artist Matthew Peak (just above Freddy's pinky) as a nod to said character in the sci-fi Dreamscape that came out earlier that same year. That was just one of a large amount of nuggets that was revealed to me while watching the quintessential Nightmare doc Never Sleep Again a few months ago.

So, that's it for now. I also did a bit on the Nightmare films for last year's anniversary - the more milestone-ly twenty-fifth - so if you want to check out some more of my memorabilia, you can click here.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

RIP Dino De Laurentiis

I, like most cinephiles, was very sad to hear about the passing of legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis last Wednesday. He was 91. Rather than doing my usual rundown of news today, I'm just going to showcase some of the titles this man produced over the years in true Horror Section fashion - with VHS coverboxes. Enjoy, and let us take a moment to celebrate the sheer volume of titles this man helped usher into the world of cinema.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Winna, Winna Chicken Dinna!

Congratulations to Dan H. He wins a free copy of Stephen King's newest, Full Dark, No Stars.


Thanks to all who entered.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Yep, I'm A Giver!

So, here's something new here -- A Giveaway!

As you may or may not know, Stephen King's newest, Full Dark, No Stars hits book shelves today. It is a collection of four novellas, much like his previous works Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight. So, guess what? Courtesy of Simon & Schuster, I actually have one of these bad boys to give away.


If you live in Canada or the US, just email me here, and tell me what your favourite King story is and why, and this Friday I will announce a winner!

For more info on Full Dark, No Stars, take a look at the press notes below;

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends "A Good Marriage."

Monday, November 8, 2010

The Mildlyamusinghouse

Tobe Hooper's Funhouse was one of those eighties slashers that slipped through the cracks for me as a kid. I remember the coverbox as well as any from back in the day, but for some reason, it remained unwatched. And then Final Girl came along and made it this month's Film Club selection.


Four teenagers decide to stay overnight in the funhouse of a travelling carnival, but are soon set upon by the deformed man who lives inside it.

It is too bad I missed Funhouse as a kid because my ten-year-old-self would have likely gotten more out of it than my thirty*cough*year-old self did. I'm sad to say that this was a pretty bland affair. The movie opens with a weird cross-pollinated Halloween & Psycho reference that I might have taken issue with if wasn't played as a gag. Essentially, this movie is a series of setups that never payoff. Early on, there's the younger brother trying to scare his older sibling bit that we've seen many times before, but it just gets dropped toward the end of the film. At least in Trick or Treats – though not particularly good either – the little kid has an actual part to play, rather than to just pad out the running time.

There was also a conspicuous lack of gore, with the majority of the deaths happening offscreen. Now, let me be clear. I'm not talking about the skillful restraint Hooper used in his earlier masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre where he made you think you saw more than you actually did. No, I'm talking about just blatantly holding out on the goods. Funhouse was released in 1981, at the height of the slasher renaissance, so you can be sure the people who turned up to see this were expecting to see some red. Hooper even had Rick Baker at his disposal and all he really got him to do were the effects on the sideshow freaks and the big bad – which were the best things in the movie I might add.


Funhouse just seemed like a wasted opportunity to me. It has a slow and plodding setup, which would have been fine if it actually led up to something, but it doesn't. The funhouse itself is creepy enough, but as far as movies that use this locale go, I don't know if it even has as much to offer as something like Dark Ride, a middling Jamie-Lynn Sigler vehicle from a few years ago. Funhouse is certainly a functional effort, but not one of Hooper's better ones, that's for sure.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Don't Kill The Messenger 80

Welcome to a jumbo-sized Halloween hangover edition of DKTM. I have such sights to show you!

Audio Terrors.

Recently, Larry Fessenden & Glenn McQuaid (the dastardly duo behind I Sell The Dead) teamed up to create a series of audio plays entitled Tales From Beyond The Pale. Last week, the first of these tales called Man On The Ledge was released online via their website. Featuring the voice talents of Fessenden, Vincent D'Onofrio & Nick Damici and written & directed by Joe Maggio, it can be downloaded now for a mere $1.99. Click on the image below for a sample.


The second episode, British and Proud by Simon Rumley just dropped a few days ago, as well. Subsequent episodes will be done by the likes of Graham Reznick, JT Petty & Paul Solet.

Mood Music.

DirtyRobot sent me a link to a cool Halloween music mix the other day. As you know, I'm a huge fan of artists that drop movie samples into their work, so it should be no surprise that I'm all over this. A dark maestro by the name of Deadboy strung together musical bites from films such as Suspiria, Zombi 2 & The Beyond to give us a horror soundscape that is sure to prolong your Halloween high. Check it out below.



Clay Bodies Everywhere!

Three years ago, an animator by the name of Takena gave us the awesome claymation splatterfest Chainsaw Maid. Well, animator Lee Hardcastle, known for his one-minute claymation rendition of The Evil Dead, has produced a follow-up to Chainsaw Maid, aptly titled Chainsaw Maid 2! Check it out below.



Dandy tomandandy.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the latest Resident Evil movie was the awesome score by tomandandy. Recently, Examiner.com columnist Mark Morton interviewed Tom Hajdu & Andy Milburn about their experience working on the latest entry of the franchise. Here's a snip;

Morton: One of the things that immediately leaps out at me when listening to the RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE score is that there is the sensation that the music is not just serving the film, but also remaining faithful to the video game series.

taa: Well, it is certainly the case that the film is the first one directed by Paul W.S. Anderson since the first one. And he was pretty adamant about wanting to maintain some spirit of the game, while at the same time creating a new evolution of the movie franchise. So yeah, that is definitely true.


Morton: So, when creating the sound palette for the film, how did you decide what instrumentation to use, where it didn’t sound like a rehash of the past?

taa: We were pretty decidedly not going to use an orchestra, so the idea was to create a palette that was cinematic and yet familiar. It feels strangely familiar, but simultaneously new. So one of the things we did to try to ground it was to use guitars. There is a lot of music in this film – there is only one real song and 82 minutes of tomandandy. There are several sequences where it is just music – no sound effects, no dialogue, just us and the imagery.

Morton: Where you guys fans of the video game before coming into this film?

taa: Oh sure! Andy and I did our PhD’s at Princeton, and we were into video games before video games really existed – when they were just characters on a screen. But yeah, we’ve tracked the evolution of RESIDENT EVIL and were really excited to be a part of this new representation of the brand.

For the rest of the interview, click here.

Okay, I'll Bite.

The other day, I got an emailed a link to a fairly promising trailer for an upcoming vampire indie called Midnight Son.



While it may be true that the market is pretty saturated with vampires right now, I've found that after positive experiences with genre indies like Underbelly and The Landlord this year, it is always worth checking out everything that comes across my Inbox. For more info on Midnight Son, check out the film's website by clicking here.

Friday, November 5, 2010

More Console Carnage

Quite some time has gone by since I sounded off on the horror video game titles that have been eating up my leisure hours, so here's a rundown.


Blue Castle Games' Dead Rising 2 came out about a month ago. I was excited about this, as never owning an Xbox, was never privy to the first game released in 2006. After slogging through twenty-plus hours of this game, I’ve decided I kind of hate it.

But, how can this be, you say? It looks like fun! You get to kill zombies in droves with all manner of weaponry!!! Sure, for the first five hours I was diggin' it, but beyond that, there are just too many things that suck the enjoyment right out of this game. I could accept the frequent load screens and outdated save system and I'll take the blame for not realizing there was an aim button until I was ten hours in, but I do not, however, accept the game's frustratingly cheap boss fights and its timed-mission format.

Dead Rising 2 gives you an open world to explore with vast amounts of side tasks and then puts you on a clock that only lets you do a fraction of them. This game boasts about having hundreds of weapon combinations, but due to the limited amount of time you actually get to experiment, I only ended up using the half-dozen or so that were easily accessible. I understand the timer is supposed to add a sense of urgency, but it’s really just an annoying way to keep the story moving forward. If this choice was an attempt to enhance replay value, I would argue that you might want to concentrate on making the first-go-round pleasurable before worrying about subsequent ones. I’ll relent that Dead Rising 2 may be a completely different experience playing co-op (as Resident Evil 5 was), but there is just no drive for me to keep playing at this point.

As fun as a bag of dicks.

The craziest thing is that I hear this is an improvement over the original! Who would have thought it never releasing on the PS3 would turn out to be a blessing?

Anyway, moving on.

Visceral Games recently released some prequel DLC for Dead Space 2 titled Ignition. It is basically a motion-comic wrapped around three mini-games, which all revolve around hacking devices around the Sprawl, the hulking space station featured in the upcoming title. The first mini-game features snake-style racing, the second is a tower-defense - or rather tower-attack - game and the third is a puzzle game involving light beams and mirrors. I wasn’t crazy about the art direction this time around. The very distinct style of Ben Templesmith (of 30 Days of Night fame) was used in the comic that preceded the original Dead Space and this one seems rather bland by comparison. There's not a lot to Ignition, but it only cost five bones, so it's a decent enough way to kill a few hours.

And I've saved the best for last, my friends. Undead Nightmare, Rock Star’s zombie DLC for Red Dead Redemption got released last week. Within a few minutes of firing this up, I was like, “this is already a thousand times better than Dead Rising 2.” It is amazing to me that Rock Star can offer something of such high quality for just ten bucks. Undead Nightmare takes place in the same world, using all the characters you met in the original game, but features an alternate zombie apocalypse storyline that is absolutely soaked in atmosphere every step of the way. Riding into Blackwater, now deserted with cryptic graffiti written everywhere, it was enough to send a chill up my spine. With ammo at a minimum, you really have to pick your shots carefully, as these zombies won’t stay down without a headshot. This becomes increasingly difficult when you have an entire horde chasing you down. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, I found and tamed a flaming horse of the Apocalypse last night. That in itself is infinitely cooler than anything that happened in a certain game I am now going to stop talking about.



The only thing to do now is go online, circle the wagons with some buddies and take on the undead masses as a unit. Good times ahead!

Starting next Tuesday, I’ll be fully entrenched with Black Ops, but this weekend will be all about ridding New Austin of the zombie plague. Happy gaming everyone!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Camera Obscura #18-20

Here below are the concluding three episodes of Drew Daywalt's web series Camera Obscura, courtesy of Dread Central and Dailymotion. For earlier episodes, click here, here and here.





Monday, November 1, 2010

The End Of The Millenium.

I was running around – as I’m sure you all were – doing Halloween-related activities all weekend, but I did manage to take in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest on Sunday afternoon.


With Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) now hospitalized after the run-in with her estranged father, Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) goes about exonerating her of attempted murder charges, as well as exposing the government conspiracy in which she is entangled – even if it puts him and his fellow editors in harm’s way.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was a solid conclusion to an excellent trilogy. It is probably my least favourite of the three movies, but again, as with my comments on the second film, The Girl Who Played With Fire, it is more of a preference thing. As I said before, the main draw of the series for me was the interaction between Lisbeth & Mikael and it has never been as concentrated and pitch-perfect since that first film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Again, I realize why this is the case, but that doesn’t keep me from wishing now, does it? Nevertheless, the third film is extremely dense and calculating, with a myriad of characters weaving in and out of the narrative. However, the storytelling is so superb that I never felt lost. Rapace & Nyqvist are again exceptional in their roles. This being the third time they have portrayed these characters, you can see just how infinitely comfortable they are in their skins.


I think that as a whole, the Millenium trilogy is a remarkable achievement. I watched Played With Fire again a few days ago as a refresher and it was even better the second time around. I have no doubt that the same will ring true with Hornet’s Nest down the line, as right now my enjoyment was based more on seeing the resolutions of the issues from the previous installment, rather the film itself minute-to-minute. It is certainly not in a hurry to get where it is going at points, that's for sure. Thinking ahead to David Fincher’s remake, that will present a further challenge to add to an already hefty pile. I would imagine the suits will be screaming at him to punch things up a bit.

And yet, even with its slow pace, I was never bored and when it ended – rather oddly I might add – I found myself wishing there was more. I crave further adventures with these beloved characters I’ve gotten to know over the last eight months. I did hear that an unfinished manuscript for a fourth Millenium book was discovered recently, so who knows? Maybe I’ll get that wish someday.

Even though, for me personally, the series’ best moments were at its start, I think this is an astounding trilogy of modern thrillers that gave us two iconic characters for the ages.