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Brightburn
Brightburn 2019
While much of the marketing of this movie focused on the well known director of Guardians of the Galaxy James Gunn, it was actually from two of his relatives who wrote the screenplay and it was given to director David Yarovesky, friend of the Gunns who directed the 70’s inspired music video for Guardians of the Galaxy starring David Hasselhoff and not a whole lot else. The movie itself is quite obviously a “What if?” story as in “What if Superman didn’t grow up to be a hero, but grew up to become a villain?” It’s a story that has been done before in the comics, and to a certain extent Chronicle also covered similar ground, but this takes it into full blown horror movie territory. That turns the movie into something quite different, and yet it was still relatively predictable as to what direction it was going. Despite that, it was still a creepy, fun ride.
Graphic Horror: Hardware
Hardware 1990
This is another somewhat interesting story when it comes to comic book movies. When this film was released in 1990, the comic book publishers of 2000 AD which was the home of Judge Dredd noticed the striking similarities to a short story they published years earlier called Shok. It was a very short 7 page story but the similarities are striking. Both the movie and the comic feature a guy bringing home a robotic head that reassembles itself to terrorize a woman who is holed up in a highly secured apartment. There’s even a moment in both stories where the woman uses a freezer to disguise herself against the robot’s heat vision. As for the film itself, it’s very much schlock, ultra-violent horror which oddly enough reminds me of another comic book movie Virus that would come out 9 years later. Those two stories both have killer robots that reassemble themselves, have a slow start, are trapped in a relatively small space, and ultimately have a low body count. And while there are some major issues with this film, it’s actually much better than the latter movie.
Superhero Horror
With Brightburn coming out later this month, I thought it was high time that I wrote a blog post looking at a specific trend in superhero movies. And as Brightburn basically seems to be a movie that asks the question: what if Superman wasn’t raised in such a good home and turned out to be a person with good morals and great intentions. Instead, what if he was a more troubled child and used his powers to become more or less a horror movie villain. And while superhero horror isn’t a widely expansive genre within superhero movies, there are actually quite a few different superhero movies that could be considered horror, or at least have several horror elements within them. Some of the best ones are more within the action/horror genre or they play more like a monster movie, the few that fall more towards the thriller side of horror tend to be very light on the superhero element and the film itself focuses more on the circumstances rather than the super powers. Also, I will be steering clear of comic book based horror movies since they have nothing that restricts them in terms of story and can be as horror as they want to be.
Split
Split 2017
Even though I watched this for the first time last year after I heard about the final twist that connected it to Unbreakable I never got around to writing about it until now. And honestly, I’m glad I did as I was able to watch a video showcasing some of the extra good parts that I missed the first time around and I also saw more things that I hadn’t quite noticed on a first watch. This was a great return to form for Shyamalan after a series of disappointments and even though Glass didn’t quite resonate with many of his fans, I think that this is a great trilogy with a very similar style. Where Unbreakable was the first act of the origin story, this is the second act where it showcases the origin of the villain. It also has a similar slow pace and real world explanations for the powers. Not only that, but it also holds its own as a stand-alone horror suspense movie.
Graphic Horror: Bad Kids of Crestview Academy
Bad Kids of Crestview Academy 2017
This was one of the last movies that I tried to watch before I went on my hiatus and I even tried a couple times. And while it’s not a great movie, it wasn’t exactly the quality of the film that kept me from finishing it, it was just other things going on at the time. I’ve seen the previous movie and while it had a few good moments, I wasn’t a fan of that one either so I didn’t have very high hopes. This is a horror/comedy/mystery/etc that really feels like a retread of the first movie with only a few slight differences here and there. It’s another group of kids in a weekend detention that get massacred over the course of the movie with a little extra mystery going on in the background. Some of the comedy hit me a bit better this time around, but I just felt like this was another mediocre go around that didn’t learn anything from the first movie and as it hints at a third movie, I just hope that it goes in a different direction if it gets made.
Graphic Horror: Abattoir
Abattoir 2016
There’s still plenty of times when I have to make the distinction on what exactly I consider to be a “comic book movie”. This is a horror movie that’s not specifically based on a comic book. From what I little information I can gather, the concept for the film likely came first, but before production was able to begin, the director took the concept and turned it into a comic book that took place before the events of the movie. A few years later, the film was able to be completed, but in most places, the comic book is referred to as a prequel to the film instead of vice versa. But considering that the comic book was published first I’m going to give this the benefit of the doubt and include it in my list. As for the actual movie itself, it’s a decent mystery that builds into a haunted house style movie with a bit of a twist at the end. The mystery has a good build up and the visual style is excellent, but the characters left me a little bit wanting.
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Graphic Horror: Bad Kids Go To Hell
Bad Kids Go To Hell 2012
In yet another instance where I happen across a movie that I wasn’t aware of, this was brought to my attention due to a pseudo-sequel which came out earlier this year called Bad Kids of Crestview Academy which I will be watching at some point in the near future. But this was an odd concept of a horror comedy version of the Breakfast Club. It even has Judd Nelson in a small role as the principal or headmaster, whatever his title is. The movie was co-written by the original comic book author Matt Spradlin. Even though they added in an extra member to this horror Breakfast Club, it didn’t help to add much interest, and while it did get a few big laughs out of me, overall it wasn’t that interesting of a film. Either as a horror, mystery, or comedy.
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Graphic Horror: Priest
Priest 2011
Happy Halloween everyone! Just when I thought I had finished my list of horror movies based on comics, I look through my stack of DVDs that I bought for this site and haven’t gotten around to yet and see this bluray that I bought on clearance for $2 a while back. About the only things I knew about it beforehand was that it was some type of vampire movie, and it was pretty terrible. I can very easily see why people don’t like this film. It’s very muddled and copies a lot of inspirations from other, much better films. It also seems to try and push its own religion even though it simultaneously condemns some of its practices. It’s an odd mix of a post-apocalyptic western with Zack Snyder-esque martial arts sequences, and while it is very far from being a good movie, I certainly wasn’t hate-watching it either.
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Top 10 Graphic Horror Films
Top 10 Graphic Horror Films
Once completing my mini-goals watching movies for this site, I often like to end with a nice list featuring some of the best in that category. Now that we’re at the end of October, almost to Halloween I’ve completed watching every horror movie that I can find based on a comic book. If you haven’t been following along, graphic horror is my term for these movies based on horror comics. Graphic violence, graphic novel, it works for me. And for this list, I’m excluding thrillers and sticking with movies that have a notable horror aspect to them. They can be action horror, horror comedy, or straight up horror just so long as there’s plenty of horror in it. Enough chit chat, let’s get on with the list!
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Graphic Horror: Faust: Love of the Damned
Faust: Love of the Damned 2000
And with just a few days left before Halloween, I finished my goal of watching the last horror movie on my list of films based on comics. This was a bit of an odd one, I even tried watching it about a year ago but only made it about a half hour in before I got sidetracked with other things and just never got back to it until now. It’s a low budget horror movie that has elements of exploitation cinema with just a touch of a superhero plot mixed in. It’s incredibly bizarre with a guy who sells his soul to a demon, a lot of sex, a bit of torture, plenty of gore, and a demon summoning ritual slash orgy at the end. There’s even a bit of a love story mixed in, but it’s so bizarre and convoluted that it’s difficult to put into words.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 