BEFORE: I'm in "Phase 2" of the October horror chain, remember that I cobbled this year's programming together from four small chains once I realized that my planned large one wasn't going to work, there was a big gap. Well, four little chains is going to get the job done, and then I'll assess what's left for next year, and I'm still adding to the list all the time, so maybe I can put another chain together next year, who knows? The same people keep popping up in horror movies again and again, so it must pay well. I know Bruce Campbell has done a bunch of them, I'd love to put the spotlight on him next year if possible. All I have right now is a bunch of little chains, two or three films here, maybe four over THERE, but you never know, they could come together. Or I could force them together, whatever works.
Look at yesterday's movie, they trimmed their main cast down to maybe three or four name-brand actors, and then maybe a dozen other people I'd never heard of. That was enough to link in and out, because I only need two connections. Hell, sometimes I only need one, if it's a good one. So Rebecca Hall now carries over from "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire", today's film also has only three or four actors I've heard of, but I only need to put it between two other films with Rebecca Hall and we're good to go.
I also just went through the fims that are new to streaming this month, and as you might imagine, there are a lot of horror movies premiering on every platform, so all I can do is list them right now, and I'll go through the cast lists when I can. Now that I have Christmas sorted, it's more important to go through cast lists of romances for February and then docs for the Doc Block.
THE PLOT: A widow begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing secrets.
AFTER: in this horror film, a widow named Beth is still going through the stages of grief after her husband committed suicide. When we first meet her she's still in a form of denial, like she just wants to watch movies alone at night and she's just phoning it in at her teaching job. One parent complains that she gave her son a failing grade, however it was a case where the teacher wasn't in that week to grade him, because well, the husband thing. So Beth gives the teen a B, but also gets real bitchy about "Well, my husband shot himself, so I don't really care, and your son's grade doesn't matter in the long run." That's actually good, I think that counts as the bargaining stage, so it's a sign of progress.
Beth also starts talking to herself as she starts going through her husband's notebooks of planned architectural projects, it seems he was working on plans for some weird labyrinths and hidden rooms or something. Still possibly OK, maybe he had a weird client or he was just working through some ideas. But when Beth has a vision at night of women running across her lawn and jumping into the lake, then imagines lights from a house across the lake, she goes to investigate and finds another house, very similar to her own, in the process of being built. Was her husband building an identical house across the lake for some reason, and if so, what could possibly be the reason?
Then Beth sees a photo on his phone of a woman in a bookstore, it looks like herself, but she can't be sure. A search of her husband's hard drive reveals dozens of photos of women who look sort of like her, and all that can't be good, either. At best he was having affairs with women who reminded him of his wife, but then, what's the point of that? Maybe he has a "type", but what exactly was he up to before he died? Once doubt has crept into her mind, she starts seeing shadows in the windows and silhouettes of her husband in various furniture, and so there's either a ghostly presence in the house or she's going insane, or maybe both are possible.
Nobody sees the bloody footprints on the dock but her, however her neighbor says he once saw Owen in the woods at night with a woman who looked a bit like Beth, and also Owen confessed to having dark impulses that he was trying to control. Oh, great, it's the other thing. Or maybe it's something even worse than that. But by the time Beth manages to figure out exactly what the entity haunting her house is, it might be too late to stop it. Or perhaps there's nothing there at all, which is kind of even scarier.
This one won't exactly hit you over the head with horrific stuff, it's more a psychological thriller, but then that's what I would expect a horror film that played at the Sundance Festival to be. What is happening right now, and what's causing it? Is her house really haunted, or is it all just her imagination? What is a "waking dream" anyway, and could it come from lack of sleep and anxiety after one's spouse dies? And is there an upside to having a second house just like your first? Can you just go there for a change of pace once in a while, or if it's just like the first house, is there no point in that? I guess it's got a different view of the lake, but who cares about that? Jeez, just sell the duplicate house and take the win. Or sell them both and start fresh somewhere else, maybe that's a better idea.
Also starring Sarah Goldberg (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Vondie Curtis-Hall (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), Evan Jonigkeit (last seen in "Together Together"), Stacy Martin (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), David Abeles (last seen in "Begin Again"), Christina Jackson, Patrick A. Sova, Crystal Swann, Catherine Weidner, Laura Austin (last seen in "Alone Together"), Jacob Garrett White, Samantha Buck (last seen in "Private Life"), Lydia Hand, Lea Enslin, Amy Zubieta, Allie McCulloch.
RATING: 6 out of 10 home movies
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