I have always been a gigantic Scooby-Doo fan. I used to watch Scooby-Doo Where Are You?, 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, The New Scooby-Doo Movies (in which Scooby-Doo meets the Harlarm Globetrotters, Cher, Sonny Bono, Batman, Robin, Josie & the Pussycats, etc.), The New Scooby-Doo, & What’s New Scooby-Doo.
My favorite of course was Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?. I used to watch the show all the time and had four birthday parties be Scooby-Doo themed. I had a huge collection of Scooby-Doo toys, from my own mystery machine and multiple Scooby-Doos; to a clock, clothes, books, and almost anything else you can think of.
One of my favorite episodes is Nowhere to Hyde the first episode of the second season.
So the gang is hanging out at the Malt Shop, just relaxing. Meanwhile, a mysterious green ghost climbs the walls of the jewelry shop stealing a rare necklace from the Movart Collection of Rare Jewels. To escape the police, he hides in the Mystery Machine.
The teens head out in their van, who’s heater is currently not working. When they ask Scooby-Doo to give them their blanket in the back he discovers the hidden Hyde.
They all don’t believe Scooby-Doo at first, but when they see him they burst out of the van and go running.
They hide and watch him take off into the marshes. When they follow him they track him to an old dilapidated mansion. They go to the door and fall through a trapdoor into the basement-a science lab.
They encounter Dr. Jekyll who is the great-grandson of the Dr. Jekyll. He too tried some experiments, tested it on himself, and became Dr. Hyde. He is worried it might be happening again. Such a trustworthy, weary sounding Doctor. He reversed it, but is afraid it might be happening again-he might be becoming Hyde again.
The gang splits up to search for “Hyde”.
Scooby-Doo amd Shaggy head up to the attic and they find a spider web, bats, and a costume. It falls on Scooby-Doo who scares Shaggy. They think Hyde is after them-but realize it is just a costume.
Then the weirdest thing happens, Helga the housekeeper interrupts them and doesn’t even care. Why are the teens here? Why are they in the attic? She just yells at them for making it a mess and keeps on cleaning.
Meanwhile, the others are searching and find a newspaper article about how Helga used to be a famous trapeze artist-gee I wonder how she ended up here.
Scooby and Shaggy run into the library and are looking at some books and discover Hyde in the library.
They run and do a great bit pretending they are on TV, when the set is broken.
This doesn’t fool Hyde for long and they are running again, taking Velma with them down a laundry chute to the basement. There they find a feather duster like the one Helga had and decide to head to Helga’s room.
Hmmm….
There they find a can of phosphorous paint and a bottle of knockout drops. Shaggy discovers something and tries to tell them, but is taken by Hyde.
After they rescue Shaggy, he reveals he found four suction cups.
They set a trap and catch the crook. And it is….
Dr. Jekyll
Yes it seems as if he is nowhere as intelligent as his great-grandfather and his experiments created nothing. Instead he sought to make up by stealing jewelry. When he knew he was going to be found out he tried to frame Helga.
So many of you might remember the post I did a year ago on Ringu, the original Japanese film. I had watched Ringu because I had heard that it was far creepier and better version that the American one. However, I found that to be false, with The Ring being the creepier one of the two. This was mostly due to the actors, some story changes, and a better explanation of Samarra. But more than anything else, my own personal connection to the film (I’ll mention that at the end).
So I was home alone one night (my roommates were all out of town for the weekend) and decided that I would spend the night in watching films. I had spotted this at the library and decided that it was perfect film for the occasion. I decided that instead of watching it alone in the living room, I would watch it in my room with the lights off. You know, set the “creepy mood”.
So the story is pretty similar to the Japanese film. You have two girls who are talking about a cabin weekend that one of the girls, Katie, had gone to. Suddenly the topic of a cursed videotape comes up. If you watch this tape you will die in seven days. After her niece dies, the main character, Rachel (Naomi Watts) starts tracking down what caused her death and gets caught up in a supernatural mystery. (For more info check out Ringu or watch the film).
So what made this film much creepier than the original? Let’s get started.
1. Lighting/Set Design
I’m not sure where the story takes place but it is always raining and gloomy. Plus the camera crew gave the whole movie this blue tint when filming which also adds to the creepiness/horror film feel to it.
2. The Kid
In the first film Yoshi wasn’t really in the film that much. He had the nightmares and could hear his cousin “calling” to him, but that was mostly it. He watches the video, which leads his mother to try even harder to discover how to stop it. He then gets dropped off at his grandfather’s house for a bit and we don’t see him until the end of the film.
In the remake this kid is SUPER CREEPY
He’s kinda like Cole from The Sixth Sense, that is if Cole wasn’t a cutie. I mean this kid is an uber creep as he only talks in monotone, and doesn’t act like a kid at all-more like a 30 year old man. To top it off he even draws strange murderous pictures. Horrifying.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3) The Video
So The Ring came out four years after Ringu and had much better special effects, not gonna lie about that. And the video was much more creepy in this film. Freaky, emphasis on the FREAK.
4. Samara/Background Explanation
So in the original film we don’t get a full background on her. We find out that a professor was looking into studies of mental telepathy and other things like that. He found a woman that has this ability and the two end up having a child that for some reason is more powerful, and CRAZY! The main character’s ex-husband also just happens to have this ability. That’s it. That’s all we get.
How does it pass down? Why does the husband have it? Is that why they got a divorce? Why was the girl so much stronger? Why did she kill all the horses?
In the remake they give her a weirder background that explains her murderous tendencies. She was almost drowned as a baby, taken away from her family, and then put into social services. She has a history of trying to get attention/be the center of attention. She was adopted by a couple that really wanted kids but she was unlike anything they had ever seen. She started to develop these powers that freaked out her parents as she was getting into their minds.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She goes to a psychiatric hospital and is questioned and treated, causing her to react as a kid would with anger. She kills her doctor and gets sent back home to the horse ranch.
To prevent her from harming anyone, they put her up in the barn away from everyone else with only a TV set. This makes her very angry.
She gets very jealous and kills all the horses by making them go insane. To her adoptive mother, Anna, those were her children. She loved them and cared for them. She has a complete mental breakdown and gets sent to a sanatarium. After she is released the family goes to the mountains and she kills Samarra by throwing her down a well, and them committing suicide herself.
It may be strange, but explains things a whole lot more than the original. Plus it is very creepy.
So personal connection.
As I mentioned earlier, I was home alone. I had 5 housemates; 3 were staying the night at their boyfriends house and 2 had gone home to see her parents. My actual roommate had gone home to see her parents and wasn’t coming back until the next day. Instead of chilling in the living room, I took my food into my bedroom, along with the film.
So I was watching the film and had just gotten to the part when Rachel has watched the tape and received the call that in seven days she will die. Just as she has hung up her phone, my phone rings!
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I pause the film and reach for the phone, shakily saying hello as its ringing scared the bejeezus out of me.
It was just my sister. She had an idea for something and wanted to bounce it off me.
Phew!
So I go back to watching the film. As I reach the part when Samarra comes out of the TV
My door starts to open.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So let me explain campus security. The dorms I was living in were like townhouses. They had 4 bedrooms-2 singles & 2 doubles. Every student was given an ID card that held campus money, allowed us to check out books, go into the rec center & dining hall, and most importantly our rooms. We had two doors to the dorms that were set to only accept the cards of the people of the house. Besides running your card through the slot (like a debit card) each member of the house had a unique four-digit number to gain access. A card wasn’t enough, you had to use your code as well. Plus the code had to match the card or else you were out of luck.
To make that even more impressive, every room was encoded to only accept the occupant’s card. My roommate and I were the only ones who could into my room, unless someone had one of our cards. (The codes were only for the front & back doors.)
So you can see why I was freaked out. Everyone had made plans to be gone, defintely be gone. But yet here was my door opening and someone or something entering.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It being really dark and the fact that the rooms were L-shaped (therefore making it hard to see “who” was exactly coming in through the door) didn’t help that much.
Of course, as I’m sure you all have figured out by now it was just my roommate. It turns out she had changed her mind and decided to come home early.
This experience made the film much more exciting, although anything that happened in the film afterward that last scare was pretty anti-climatic.
So It was a pretty great film and I suggest you check it out.
And I’m not just trying to pass it off to save myself from being killed. LOL
“You think you know something, don’t you? You think you’re the clever little girl who knows something. There’s so much you don’t know, so much. What do you know, really? You’re just an ordinary little girl, living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there’s nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep, filled with peaceful stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares.”
So for my first Alfred Hitchcock film, I am going to review Shadow of a Doubt. This really surprised me as I never thought this would have been the first, (I was sure it would be Psycho). But I had such an urge to talk about it, that I had to follow it. Now this has never been considered one of Hitchcock’s greats, in fact it bombed at the office, but it was both Alfred Hitchcock’s and Teresa Wright’s favorite film.
I actually have a personal connection to this film myself. I used to go to college near Santa Rosa and one day for film class we were going to watch a psychological film. The one we chose wouldn’t work and I suggested that we had to watch an Alfred Hitchcock film, specifically Shadow of a Doubt. I had this urge and was pushing the film so hard, even though it is not one of my favorite Hitchcock films. It was only when we watched it, that I remembered that it was set and filmed in Santa Rosa. In fact, I have been to all the areas the film was set in.
So the film is supposed to be about a happy town, full of normal American people, but underneath this lies something horrible. This kind of thing was what David Lynch ended up doing and becoming famous for in his film Blue Velvet and TV series Twin Peaks.
So the film starts off with the extremely handsome Joseph Cotten, lying on a bed. His name is Charlie Oakley.
His landlady knocks on the door and tells him that there are two men looking for him. Charlie quickly packs some things up, gathers his money, and takes off. He makes plans to get out of the East coast, going heading to California to visit his sister Emma in Santa Rosa.
In Santa Rosa, we meet Charlie 2 (Teresa Wright), named after her Uncle Charlie. (From now on I’m going to say Charlie for Teresa Wright and Uncle Charlie for Joseph Cotten as otherwise it will be too confusing.) Anyways, Charlie has been complaining that life is boring. Nothing interesting ever happens in life.
She finds out that her Uncle Charlie is coming and is ecstatic. The two of them have always shared a special bond. Out of everyone in their family, she feels that Charlie is the only one who really gets her.
Uncle Charlie greets the family and not only bring life into the house but gifts. Charlie gets the most special gift of all, an emerald ring. Charlie notices an engraving of initials on the inside and asks Uncle Charlie what they stand for. He doesn’t know and blames the jeweler for selling him an old ring instead of a new one.
Sound suspicious
He keeps trying to push Charlie to let him get it re-engraved, but she refuses. At dinner, Emma is humming this song. It has been stuck in her head all day and she can’t remember what it is called. She asks around to everyone else, and her husband Joseph says that it is The Merry Widow Waltz. When Uncle Charlie hears this, he is startled and spills his wine.
After dinner, Joseph’s friend comes over. Now this is an interesting subplot. The two of them are huge mystery fans and are constantly trying to create the perfect murder. This subplot always makes me laugh and it reminds me of a friend and I. We are always talking about the best way to kill someone and get away with it. I always go with the Secret Window way.
“Joseph Newton: We’re not talking about killing people. Herb’s talking about killing me and I’m talking about killing him.”
In fact, they remind me of Randy from Scream except with actual murders, than horror films.
They determine one of the best ways to kill someone is to disguise the murder as a suicide.
The next day, Uncle Charlie is reading the paper, when he sees a story that upsets him. He rips the page with the story on it, and turns it into a house for the kids, hiding the ripped story in his pocket. Ann and Roger think it’s are cool, but they have to dismantle it as their father hasn’t had a chance to look at the paper.
Charlie saw him hiding the torn pages and starts teasing her Uncle. She grabs them out of his pocket and tries to put them together. But before she can, Uncle Charlie gets angry and pushes her away. She becomes frightened, but Uncle Charlie consoles her, telling her that it was a bad story about a friend.
Soon after, two men approach the family and let them know they have been chosen to be the feature family for a census agency on “typical American family-ness”. They will be coming to interview them and photograph their average lives.
Emma is really excited as Uncle Charlie will now be a part of the featured story. She tells Charlie about how she only has one photo of him. It was when he was a little boy, before he got in a horrible accident. After he recovered from the accident he never was the same again. Often getting into trouble.
Uncle Charlie says he will be staying in town for a while, and then begins acting strangely. At the bank he deposits forty thousand dollars in cash and makes all these jokes about the bank and Joseph (Charlie’s dad) embezzling funds. He also extremely avoids the census takers. He thinks they are up to something. Whenever they come to the house, he always leaves and won’t answer any questions.
When his picture gets taken, he becomes extremely angry and demands for the negative roll.
The younger of the two census workers, (Macdonald Carey), asks Charlie to be his guide of the town, and she agrees only to please her mother. When he gets her alone he tells her that he isn’t a census taker, but that instead he is Detective Jack Graham and that he is with the FBI. They are investigating “The Merry Widow Murderer”, a man who romances widows and murders them taking their money. He tells her that that they have two suspects. One of which is her Uncle Charlie.
Noooooooooo!!!!!!!
The next day Charlie is still reeling from the news and sleeps all day. She doesn’t want to believe her Uncle Charlie is capable of murder. However, she can’t help thinking about his suspicious behavior.
Sound suspicious
Charlie gets even more freaked out when Uncle Charlie gives a rant on widows.
“Uncle Charlie: The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands, dead, husbands who’ve spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else, horrible, faded, fat, greedy women… Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?”
Charlie suffers a breakdown as she can’t handle the thought that her Uncle is a murderer. That coupled with her father and Herb’s constant murder talk, ugh she just needs to get away. Uncle Charlie follows her and takes her to a bar to talk.
At the bar, he confronts her suspicions and tells her that he is considered for “The Merry Widow Murderer”, but it isn’t him. It is just a coincidence.
Yes I am
Charlie listens, but something doesn’t sit right with her. She still feels suspicious. She sneaks into Uncle Charlie’s room to try and figure out what article he had ripped up.
She can’t put the pieces back together, and instead heads to the library. She convinces the librarian to let her search the papers and discovers that “The Merry Widow Murderer” killed a famous entertainer. She notices that the initials of the woman match the ring Uncle Charlie gave her.
She goes to her uncle to confront him, and he asks her not to say anything. She agrees to wait as she knows it will hurt her mother.
Meanwhile, Jack is pushing Charlie to give him info on her Uncle, but she won’t say a thing. They sent the photo of Uncle Charlie back East but haven’t heard whether or not he is the guy the are actually after. The other suspect they were considering was killed fleeing from the police and many believe he is the murderer.
After this news, Jack goes to Charlie and tells her that he likes her. And that he would like to date her, maybe even marry her one day.
I know. He has been nice, but he never even seemed to show that he was that interested in her. He totally pulls a Mr. Darcy, completely dropping that bomb out of the blue.
Uncle Charlie is all smiles and it seems like everything is fine, but Charlie can’t shake an uneasy feeling.
This doesn’t feel right.
Soon Charlie suffers from an accident. As she is coming down the stairs one of the steps falls through causing her to fall. She checks later but can’t tell of any tampering.
Oh what a horrible accident.
Now these are some of the best scenes in the film. In the beginning you aren’t sure if Uncle Charlie is doing anything, whether they are accidents or not. I mean could he really be so cold-blooded as to kill his own niece?
Uncle Charlie is asked to give a public lecture and the whole family is going to go hear him speak. There isn’t enough room for them to go in one car, so they decide to send most in a taxi, with the Charlies going in the car. Charlie gets trapped in her garage with the car going. She calls for help, but the music Uncle Charlie is playing overpowers her screams.
Luckily, Herb is coming by as he does everyday and hears her, freeing her.
The next day, Uncle Charlie decides that he is leaving. Everyone but Charlie is sad to see him go. As he gets on the train we see that he won’t be traveling alone, but a rich widow from the town. Every one comes on board to check out the train, with Uncle Charlie gets Charlie to stay longer to talk. The train starts going while she is on it. She tries to run off, but Uncle Charlie tries to push her off the train onto the track of an oncoming one.
The two struggle and Charlie manages to overpower him, knocking him off the train.
There is a funeral for Uncle Charlie and Jack comes back. Charlie tells him the truth and why she kept it hidden from him. Together they resolve to keep Uncle Charlie’s crimes a secret.
You have to see this film. The story is great, the acting amazing, and the cinematography is just beautiful.
Just what is this thing? Chaos, chaos in the flesh.
Phantoms is a 1998 film that is based on the book by Dean Koontz. The story is very creepy, and I was surprised at how well the film was done. I thought it was going to be done in a very stupid, silly way; but it was the essence of creepiness. The only thing I didn’t care for was Liev Schreiber, I felt that he didn’t portray the character very well in the beginning. I wouldn’t have chosen Rose McGowan either, but she did surprisingly well. I loved Ben Affleck as the sexy Sheriff and love interest. I love Ben Affleck though, I mean who doesn’t? They changed the film from the book, as expected, but the changes do not destroy the film, thank goodness. If you’d like to watch the film go here. So the film starts out with Dr. Jennifer Pailey bringing her trouble-making sister Lisa to live with her. They are hoping the change of scenery will help straighten her out as she was involved with gang members in Los Angelas.
I want to go back to LA
When they reach the town, it is empty. Like really empty. There is no one out and about even though they are in a ski town, in the middle of winter with great snow.
They continue on home. When Jennifer gets there she finds her housekeeper dead. All the life had been sucked out of her and she looks burned.
The girls are widely freaked and decided to head to the sheriff’s. But there is one problem, their car won’t work.
Oh no!
The girls hurry on to the sheriff’s office where they find a deputy, burned and blackened. He appears to have shot his gun at something, but they don’t find any traces of it, except shells. Dr. Jennifer grabs a gun and the two run off to the bakery, as it is getting dark and they are really freaked out. They head to the baker’s, running quickly as they hear sounds as if someone is following them. When they get there the oven goes off revealing severed heads!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
The girls are completely grossed out and confused when the Sheriff (who ex-FBI) finds them.
Hello Sexy!
With him are his two deputies Steve Shanning (Nicky Katt) and Stuart Wargle (Liev Shreiber) have come to investigate. They decide the best thing to do is go to the sheriff’s department, and just when they do every single horn, siren, whistle, bell, etc. goes off and then suddenly stops. The only lights left on are down on the Candleglow Inn up the street.
They check it out and see that only four guests are registered. The Sheriff and Stu go upstairs, while the girls stay behind with deputy Steve.
While the sheriff is upstairs he goes into a room and starts looking through an opening in a closet. When he does he sees a vision of a young boy with a gun, which disappers. You see when the Sheriff was FBI he accidentally shot a boy, which made him quit and turn to small town life.
Aw! Look at his face. 😦
Stu goes in the other room and finds a beautiful, dead woman. He sits next to her and puts his hand up her leg…
What a perv!
Then the Sheriff walks in. He lets it go, even though he is severely grossed out as he knows what Stu was doing, but he needs every man he can get as he has no idea what the situation is.
The Sheriff has Stu watch the hall as he continues checking things out. Stu comes on to Lisa who tells him flat out no, she is not digging that.
Dr. Jennifer joins the Sheriff and they discover that a bathroom locked from the inside (that has no other windows or doors) is empty, with something written on the mirror in lipstick. The writing says “Dr. Timothy Flyte–The Ancient Enemy“.
The two have no idea who Dr. Flyte is but intend on finding out. In another empty room they find a bunch of metal objects like jewelry, buttons, watches, gold teeth, a pacemaker, etc.; concluding that this thing, whatever it is strips a person completely of everything, if it chooses.
EW!
They go back into the lobby to regroup and figure out their next step. But then they suddenly hear a woman crying out “Help me!” and Deputy Steve rushes out to save her. The Sheriff follows him, but when he gets outside all that is left of Steve is his shoes and a gun.
They head back to the Sheriff’s office and put the dead deputy in a body bag. They then call for help–military, Dr. Flyte, anybody, but the line was so bad they don’t know whether or not it went through.
Bryce and Stu go through the dept. and pull out all their ammunition getting ready for–whatever the thing is that is trying to attack them. The lights go out and the creature takes on a Alien/The Thing (1982) feel. The next thing you know, Stu is dead.
Too be honest, good riddance. He was a creep and I didn’t like him.
They also put Stu in a body bag and wait out the night.
We then switch to another part of the country- Dr. Flyte. Dr. Flyte (Peter O’Toole) is a tabloid worker in New York City. He used to a professor at Oxford, but they let him go as they felt his writings were “too silly”.
Two FBI agents ask him to go to the small, winter, town of Snowfield to help solve what the “thing” is.
Back in Snowfield the three survivors are trying to figure out what to do next. Lisa tries to take a nap while the Sheriff tells Dr. Jen about how the monster called up the incident with the young boy. The two are interrupted when Lisa asks the Sherif to walk with her to the bathroom. He checks it and finds it clear. Lisa begins to smoke when she hears a squealing noise coming out of the drain.
She checks out the bathroom stalls (much like Scream) and finds the Deputy Stu there!
In the book the “Phantom thing” was more like the Blob from The Blob (1958); although it could take on the shape of other things, or create small phantom pieces of itself. In the film, however, the “Phantom” embodies the form of Stu, which is understandable from a filmmaker point of view. It doesn’t copying The Blob at all, as I mentioned earlier copying The Thing. Just like The Thing, the “phantom” takes on the appearance of something. This wasn’t a horrible decision as I bet it was easier to film. They also did a lot of blackout or limited lighting when the creature was in its true form, which allowed it to remain creepy as your imagination creates it. The director of It(1990) should have used the same technique, it would have been a better film.
I didn’t really care for Liev Schreiber, and thought he could have been much creepier. Instead he just comes off as a pervert. This film has actually ruined him for me in all other films. When I watch Kate & Leopold, Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Lee Daniel’s the Butler, or X-Men Origins: Wolverine; I keep expecting him to do something perverted to all the women.
Yes I am
Anyways, back to the story. So the Sheriff goes into the bathroom and can’t find anything. They go down to check the body bags, but both are empty.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Meanwhile Dr. Flyte is on route to Snowfield with military General Leland Copperfield, some mobile labs, an armored strike van, etc–all ready to take on whatever the “thing” is. They ask Dr. Flyte about “the Ancient Enemy”. Dr. Flyte explains that there were creatures, he calls “Ancient Enemy” who are amoeboidshapeshifters. This Ancient Enemy rarely feeds, but when it does, the effects are devastating and it was theorized that the Enemy either caused or aided in the extinction of the dinosaurs, the destruction of the Mayan civilization, Roanoke disappearance, the missing army of Nanking, China in 1939, etc. And the town appears to have been built on the home of one of these “Ancient Enemies”.
The group arrives to Snowfield and the three survivors come to meet the army. The next thing you know, “the thing” has taken out almost the whole team using its shape-shifting qualities and the pipes/sewers. Now these scenes are pretty intense. I was watching them and screaming and my roommates were all, are you ok? I highly recommend watching this film.
General Copperfield is last of the military to be killed; as a pair of oily black tentacles seeps up through the pavement, penetrates his hazmat suit, and smothers him.
[Note: From The Mist]
This leaves Dr. Flyte, Sheriff Bryce, Jenny, and Lisa as the remaining survivors..
He’s dead but the “Phantom” uses his body as a mouthpiece and begins speaking to the crowd.
“My Flesh. Study it. Write the gospel. But do not try to leave. Witnesses to the Miracle.”
The body then falls to the ground and an oily black substance comes out along with a gecko, of which the group is supposed to get a sample of. Dr. Flyte begins to analyze the sample, coming to the conclusion it has lived in the depths of the earth for eons, growing to immense size, and absorbing knowledge from its prey. It can separate off parts of Itself to send as drones, warriors, phantoms, etc.–having them assume the shapes of anything or anyone It has absorbed; even of people or monsters from memories and dreams.With these, It has manipulated Bryce, Jenny, and Lisa into bringing Dr. Flyte here, to be Its prophet, and to write Its gospel. For It has begun to think of Itself as God–or the Devil. Indestructible. All-Powerful. Immortal. Unstoppable.
This is bad. Very bad.
Dr. Flyte’s analysis reveals that It is similar to oil and if they are able to make the same kind of bacteria that eats away at oil spills, they may just have a chance at stopping it. They create cultures and prepare for the final battle.
Dr. Flyte goes out and calls to the creature.
He tells It that he needs to see all of it in order to write Its “gospel”. He says that the others are creating a weapon against It, that they don’t believe in It like he does. It appears first as a single person, but then becomes all 400 residents of the town, merging and melding into one swirling mass, which resolves Itself into an immense, hideous, upright millipede.
The Sheriff, Jenny and Lisa run and fire the guns loaded with the bacteria culture into It. This causes It to scream. Jenny and Lisa run for shelter into the nearby deputy’s office, to reload their guns but are pursued by a drone of Deputy Stu.
Deputy Wargle: Oh, you’ve got some guns, ladies, you wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you? [both women cock shotguns and point them at him] That’s a dumb question.
They empty their shotguns into him, knocking him down, and blowing away huge chunks of his legs and arms. Tentacles shoot out of his arm and leg stumps. The girls run away and and he follows, but is killed by Dr. Jen as she shoots him with the last of the culture.
The bigger entity is falling apart and the Sheriff follows the last of It down into the sewer, finding him face to face with the boy that he killed. He hesitates, and while he does so, a tentacle shoots out of the boy’s mouth, and knocks him down. His gun with the culture is stolen by It. It pulls the vials out and starts taunting the Sheriff. In response to It’s mockings the Sheriff pulls out his gun and shoots the vials, causing the bacteria to spread all over.
With one final ear-shattering scream It is gone, and Bryce makes his way back to the others. As a helicopter arrives to rescue them, Dr. Flyte announces to the others that the Entity has won after all: It wanted him to tell the world, and that’s just what he’s going to do. Everything seems to end well, or well enough. Dr. Flyte has his story and will win back his prestige; Sheriff Bryce is no longer traumatized about killing the boy; Dr. Jen and Sheriff Bryce have found each other; and Lisa and Dr. Jen have bonded. Sounds as perfect an ending you can get for a horror film.
Uh, uh uh. Not quite yet!
We switch to a scene in a bar where Dr. Flyte is in TV talking about It and how it may still be out there waiting. One of the guys in the bar turns to his companion and says its a lot of hooey. A strange laugh is heard and at the end of the bar is Deputy Stu Wrangle, showing that It is still alive.
So it really was a good film, and I’m telling you the scenes with the creature are super creepy!!! You’ll love them if you love scary movies!
So unlike the other facebook cover pages I have made (and you should have guessed by now that practically every post has one) I made two for this one as the first one wasn’t working out right. Here’s the second one for those of you interested.
We traced the call! It’s coming from inside the house! Do you hear me? It’s coming from inside the house! You need to get out!
So I love this movie so much! It came out during the period of remakes of 1970s horror films, you had Dracula 2000, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Wicker Man (2006), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Carrie (2002), The Omen (2006), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Halloween (2007), and Invasion (2007).
I thought it was a great remake, although I’ve never seen the original. And as the trailer revels the climatic ending I don’t feel bad about doing so either.
So the film starts off a police cleanup as a baby-sitter and the kids she had been watching were ripped to shreds.
Then we cut to out protagonist Jill who is practicing track. She is suffering from a supremo of bad days. Her times are all off and she needs to improve her speed. Part of the reason she is sucking so much is that she is distracted by her broken heart.
It turns out that her boyfriend and best friend hooked up! What jerks!
And she is grounded because she went over the mins on her phone. Remember, back in the day when every cellphone plan had min limits, and everyone was going over them all the time?
Oops!
She really wants to go to the bonfire party, but the only place she is allowed to go is to babysit.
Yep, the money from the job is supposed to be enough to cover the cost of the phone bill. They must be paying her an awful lot of money.
To further her punishment, she can’t have her own car but has to be dropped off by her dad and then dropped off by the couple when they return from their night. Now this is a pretty sweet baby-sitting job. It is for a rich family, who lets you eat anything in the house, watch things on their massive TV, getting paid lots of money, and you don’t even have to look after the kiddos as they’re sick.
Only one problem, she is in the freakin’ middle of nowhere. But it is a beautiful house!
It has a so many glass windows and such, it also has an inside garden/aviary thing.
Now my home has a whole wall of windows, so when I first watched this with my friends we were all freaked out during the…well I’ll save that for later.
So Jill doesn’t have much to do as the kids are sick and knocked out upstairs. The maid is there, but will be leaving shortly after she finishes her rounds. The couple have an older son who attends college and he may or may not be coming back to visit, but if he does he’ll crash in the guest house in their backyard.
Seems easy enough
So Jill gets ready for a night o’ fun. She eats popsicles and tries on jewelry and clothes.
Everything is fun and games until Jill begins to receive anonymous and annoying phone calls.
Voice of the Stranger: Have you checked the children?
Jill Johnson: What
[Stranger hangs up. Jill runs and checks on the children. Comes back downstairs]
Jill Johnson: [phone rings] Hello?
Voice of the Stranger: [pauses] How were the children?
At this point in the film if you look hard enough you can actually see him watching her through the window while she is walking around and talking to her on the phone.
In between she gets some creepy calls from her ex’s friends. She gets even more calls, but then one turns out to be her ex-friend Tiffany. Tiff the big, bad, boyfriend stealer.
Tiff comes and tries to fix things between them, with Jill feeling lukewarm about the whole thing. She kicks Tiff out, who tries to leave but can’t as a tree blocks her path. A tree that wasn’t there earlier. That means only one thing, bye-bye Tiff.
Goodbye now!
The calls continue getting even creepier.
Jill Johnson: Tiffany, I know it’s you. I can see your name on Caller ID, genius.
Voice of the Stranger: This isn’t Tiffany.
Jill Johnson: Who is this?
Voice of the Stranger: [pause] Who is this?
Jill Johnson: Cody?
Voice of the Stranger: Who’s Cody?
Jill Johnson: You better cut this out!
[stranger hangs up]
Now for the most part Jill is pretty smart girl. She calls the police and tries to get them to trace the call and get rid of her stalker. She keeps the security system on at all times. When she sees a light go on in the guest house, she thinks it might be the son and tries to get him to come back with her to help.
She turns the security system off and runs down to the guest house to get the son. When she gets in there, she discovers that there is no one there.
Jill concludes that it must have been the maid, going over here to clean and then left after she completed the job. She runs back to the house, causing the security system to go off. She gets a call from the company, but tells them that it is only her. She must have only thought she turned the system off.
She continues to get more calls from “the Stranger”, telling her that he can see her.
Oh Crap!
Jill Johnson: He can see me!
Officer Burroughs: Sorry?
Jill Johnson: It’s Jill, the girl who called before about the man who keeps on calling.
Officer Burroughs: What’s going on?
Jill Johnson: He called me again.
Officer Burroughs: What did he say?
Jill Johnson: He’s out there, he’s outside, he’s watching me through the windows.
Officer Burroughs: Did you see him?
Jill Johnson: No, but I know he can see me, because I went upstairs…
Officer Burroughs: Okay, take a deep breath, where’s the house keeper?
Jill Johnson: I don’t know, I saw her purse and the keys but I can’t find her.
Officer Burroughs: The house locked up?
Jill Johnson: Yes.
Officer Burroughs: Alarm system?
Jill Johnson: It’s on.
Officer Burroughs: Okay, you’re safe inside that house. If he wanted to break in, he wouldn’t be calling.
Jill Johnson: But he must want something!
Officer Burroughs: Listen to me, Miss, it’s just some a****** trying to hassle you.
So when my friends and I were watching this film, we were in the living room which has a whole wall made entirely out of windows, similar to the house in the film. There is also a window behind the TV. As we were watching this part, something hit our window.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our cat had jumped up on the fence outside and hit the window with her tail. We were just so into the film that we were creeped out.
So back to the film. So Jill keeps trying to talk to “the Stranger” so the police can trace the calls. It is so creepy, it was like when that crazy girl kept calling/texting me last spring.
Jill Johnson: [On phone] You really scared me, if that’s what you wanted. Is that what you wanted?
Besides Tiff, Jill also finds the body of the housemaid. She tries to help save the children, but end up getting in a deadly fight with “the Stranger”.
Save the Children!!!!
Jill is awesome how she takes down the stranger, totally kicking butt.
Kudos for carrying the crowbar
The cops come and capture the killer and cart him off, taking Jill with them to be looked at.
The ending is great, with its nod to Friday the 13th. Check it out, it is an amazing film!
The creepiest thing about this film is how the guy watches her and how he gets in the house and does the whole cat and mouse game. It is such a creeptastic film.
![[Note: From The Mist]](https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/the-mist-2007-05.jpg)
![Deputy Wargle: Oh, you've got some guns, ladies, you wouldn't shoot an unarmed man, would you? [both women cock shotguns and point them at him] Deputy Wargle: That's a dumb question.](https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/600px-phantoms-ithaca-1.jpg)
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