Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 19: Case 39

A naïve case-worker works desperately to save a 10 year old girl from abusive parents, only to discover she herself might need saving from that same little girl!

First off, it stars Rene Zellweger in the titular role of the case worker Emily Jenkins, and that was just a bad choice, she should really stick to comedy. Jodelle Ferland is Lillith, the little girl in question, who happens to be a lot more than she seems. Ferland is rather famous for her roles as Mary Jensen in Kingdom Hospital and of course as Alessa and Sharon in Silent Hill. This role with Ferland as the demonic daughter is right up her alley already, though the role itself wasn’t very fleshed out sadly. Ian McShane is the friendly cop Detective Mike Barron trying to help Emily. And there’s also fellow social worker Doug, acted by Bradley Cooper.

So the whole thing starts off with Emily going through her cases (hence the title) and after getting a little too nosy with parents she considers acting strangely, Emily finds them trying to burn Lillith in the oven with duct tape binders. I’m not kidding either. So nothing would help for it but for Emily to get Lillith out of there asap, and of course Lillith just wants to live with Emily and not any fosters. As soon as she gets her fondest wish, strange things start happening, and anyone in her way of making a perfect little family with Emily is eliminated in the most horrid ways Lillith can imagine. Emily realizes she’s taken a monster into her own home a little too late; several close friends of hers have died at this point. So deciding to take matters into her own hands, Emily ironically finds herself acting the same way Lillith’s parents did: bolts and locks on the doors, keeping Lillith confined, and finally some actual attempts at killing. I won’t spoil the end, but it did seem a little…cut off? There is very little explanation as to whether or not Lillith is some sort of soul-sucking demon, nasty vengeful spirit, or what, why she does all these horrid things and what she gets out of it. But, for a very fine performance from a scary young lady, the movie is worth a shot.

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Alicia Glass

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 18: The Amityville Horror

Remade any number of times, The Amityville Horror is at its roots your more basic haunted house story. But did you know, the inspiration for the story came from real life? In Amityville Long Island in 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr., known as “Butch”, murdered both his parents and 4 of his siblings, and there were wild rumors of “paranormal influence” behind it. Jr. has made several different confessions over the years, and a lot of them contradict eachother in startling ways, but nothing (so far) has been mentioned about any kind of occult or paranormal influence – just a lot of familial strife and hate.

The Amityville Horror, the original story, involves the Lutz family and a period of time inside a house that terrorizes them with paranormal influences, forcing them to finally flee. The idea being it being, that the house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground (another one?) and hooboy are those natives angry. In the 2005 remake starring Ryan Reynolds as patriarch George Lutz, a character named Jodie DeFeo was introduced as having been a previous tenant of the house who died miserably and who now haunts the youngest Lutz daughter. It’s actually fairly good for a remake, largely in part due to Reynolds performance of a man going maddd.

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Alicia Glass

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 17: Thir13en Ghosts

Recent widow Arthur and his kids learn a recently deceased uncle left them a house, without telling them it’s full of ghosts!

That’s a very short synopsis for a movie that’s actually a lot more involved than you might originally think. Arthur’s Uncle Cyrus actually hunts ghosts, that’s how the movie starts off and where Dennis Rafkin gets his introduced, he helps Cyrus with his curse of a gift to interact with ghosts. Arthur and his two kids are all trying to get over the death of mother fairly recently in a fire, and overwhelmed with inheritance, Arthur does the dumbest thing possible and brings every last person and the housekeeper to check out the new house. The house itself is literally made of glass, at least the inside walls, scored with runes designed to keep the captured ghosts inside, which the family doesn’t learn until it’s far too late! Each ghost gets a mini back story, and that kind of detail is hard to do in a feature length film that has so much else going on. Ghostbusters, the good kind that want to release the ghosts from this earthly prison supposedly, show up somewheres in the movie and create all sorts of extra havoc. Ultimately the guy who played Monk, Tony Shalhoub as Arthur Kriticos, has little business being in a Horror flick of this caliber, but does just fine for the character they gave him.

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Alicia Glass

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 16: The Shining

Once again, Stephen King makes the list, wow. The Shining, the original film is of course what we’re talking about here, not that awful remake; the version that is a legend starring Jack Nicholson and directed by omg Stanley Kubrick, that man himself.

The story is, at its most basic components, a combination of that good ole cabin fever horror, and a haunted hotel with an attitude. Jack Torrance takes his wife and son with him to do the job of winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, and try to get some writing done in the interim. Jack’s wife Shelly doesn’t really do anything as far as I can tell, other than the nervous hausfrau bit, which I guess is alright for this time period. That’s another thing one has to bear in mind when watching this movie – the time period, which happens to be 1980. This means the décor of the Hotel is just godawful, a lot of the actors still smoke onscreen around children, and there simply aren’t things like Internet pizza rescue. However, director Kubrick is as we all know damn well a genius – his Spartan use of good lighting, creepy music, and some of the finest acting around, makes for a timeless horror story. The kid Danny does an amazing job for an actor that young, legend has it they managed to film the entire movie without the tyke being aware that it was a Horror flick. But let’s face it, without the mesmerizing performance of Nicholson, the movie would not be the iconic piece of Horror filmmaking it is still, even today.

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Alicia Glass

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 15: Candyman Sweets

Three films based off some short stories from the delightfully twisted mind of Clive Barker, presents us with the legend of Candyman, Mister “Sweets to the sweet” himself. Known for a ghost or vengeful spirit who can be pulled into our world by calling him out of the mirror, Candyman is the inheritor of a very unfortunate legacy that began in what could be considered innocent love.

Daniel Robitaille was a black slave in one of those awful standard plantation stories, who was commissioned to paint a portrait of the lovely plantation owners daughter, Caroline. Nothing for it but for them to have an affair, Caroline to catch pregnant, and Daniel gets run out of town on a rail, Caroline’s father leading the way. After chasing him across the fields, Daniel gets his hand cut off by a rusty blade and coated in fresh honey from a nearby beehive, leading him to die in a nicely horrific fashion. Many years later, Candyman is a legend like Bloody Mary, and those young women and men who attempt to explore the journey of Daniel Robitaille end up dead or worse. I was always glad the movie Gods kept the same actor for the role of Candyman, the unforgettable Tony Todd of the amazing voice. Him trussed up in a beaverskin coat with a nasty hook for a hand with killer bees coming from his mouth is always an awesome sight.

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Alicia Glass