The View From The Mountain

Whether you believe in the “true” exploits of demonologists Ed & Lorraine Warren or not (I don’t), The Conjuring series of films, based on their “true” stories, have all been very entertaining, with everything now supposedly coming to an end with The Conjuring: Last Rites . After a prologue in 1964, where we witness the traumatic birth of the Warren’s daughter, Judy, the rest of the movie advances to 1986, with the Warrens now somewhat retired. They’re still speaking at colleges, before giggly students who crack Ghostbusters jokes at them, but the Warrens have ceased personally investigating creepy cases on their own. That is, until their good friend Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) winds up hanging from a noose, thanks to a demonic attack. Father Gordon had been trying to get the Warrens to investigate the case of the Smurls--a family in Pennsylvania who are suffering through a severe haunting in their house, and when the Warrens finally do get involved, the demons come...

I thought the first M3GAN , about a killer robot that goes on a bloody rampage, was fun. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but I didn’t hate it, either. It treaded over the same familiar ground that the original Chucky movies did, but did a slightly better job of it--at least as far as a slasher film about a killer doll can go. The first M3GAN still did well enough to warrant a sequel three years later: M3GAN 2.0 . The sequel was a huge bomb at the box office, with its main producer, Jason Blum, actually going out and doing press to apologize for the “wrong turn” that the sequel made. But that "wrong turn" is exactly why I enjoyed M3GAN 2.0 so much. The sequel wisely throws out the horror trappings of the first film in favor of a more fast-paced, heavily science fiction-imbued action tale. M3GAN 2.0 opens with AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a super spy robot, on a mission into Iran, where she is tasked with finding a kidnapped scientist. But AMELIA goes r...

When I was a kid, I collected a series of action figures made from a company called Mego. They produced eight inch tall figures from several IPs back then, like Star Trek and the Planet of the Apes. They also produced superhero figures from DC and Marvel Comics, like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four. I received the Fantastic Four--all four figures--as a birthday gift from my mother one year. The interesting thing was, I never actually asked for them. I never even knew they had made figures of this superhero team, which I didn’t know that much about because I hadn’t read their comics. But I was still very grateful to have the F4 in my League of Superheroes. Created by comic book legends Stan Lee & Jack Kirby back in the early 1960s, the Fantastic Four were known as Marvel’s First Family. They were a superhero team who were truly family. Reed Richards was the stretchy leader who was married to Sue Storm, who had the powers of invisibility and force fiel...

So many horror movies start out with a really great concept that when you see the basic idea introduced in the trailer, you’re eager to watch the film, just to see how this plays out--only for the movie to fall flat on its face, thanks to the filmmakers being unable to run with the idea. Weapons is one such horror movie that deftly avoids this pitfall. The main intriguing idea that Weapons has is the mysterious disappearance of an entire classroom of students at a specific time--2:17 am--one dark night. But these children don’t just vanish. They’re each seen running out of their homes on security cameras, still clad in their pajamas, with their arms bent back as they run, as if they’re flying. Once out of sight of the cameras, the children--17 in all--seemingly disappear off the face of the earth. If they were abducted by strangers, it would actually make for an easier case for the police to work. But it’s an even more bizarre mystery with the children having all ran off ...

October is a rare month for boys. That’s what author Ray Bradbury reminds us at the beginning of both his novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes , and the movie that was made from it some twenty years later. Bradbury (1920-2012) was a celebrated grandmaster of science fiction, fantasy and dark fantasy--writing novels, short stories and screenplays throughout the better part of the twentieth century. He would also write The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451 . Something Wicked This Way Comes started out as the short story Black Ferris . Bradbury later turned it into a film script, but when plans fell through, he adapted the script into a novel, publishing it in 1962. Taking place in a small town in the early 20th century, SWTWC deals with a pair of boys who face a malevolent force that seeks to destroy everyone and everything they hold dear. Will Holloway (Vidal Peterson) and Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) are best friends who are innocently enjoy...

With 28 Years Later , director Danny Boyle returns to the zombie saga that he began with 28 Days Later. The direct sequel, 28 Weeks Later , was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. At the end of 28 Weeks Later , the zombies were busting out of England and sprawling onto the European continent. But in 28 Years Later , the “zombies” (who are still-living humans infected with a rage virus) have been pushed back into England, and the entire British Isles has now become something like New York City in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York : a vast wasteland that has been placed under quarantine by the outside world. But the British Isles are not all gloom and doom. A small village of non-infected humans are thriving on an island off the Scottish coast. Despite being shunned by the rest of the world, these hardy people have formed their own way of life and customs. They’re protected by a natural causeway that connects their island to the mainland--a causeway that sinks below the ...