Sunday, March 30, 2025

The Attic, 2007

The Attic is a 2007 American horror film directed by Mary Lambert and starring Elisabeth Moss, Jason Lewis, Tom Malloy, and Catherine Mary Stewart.



TRAILER



PLOT

Emma has a strong aversion towards her family's new house, especially the attic. After moving in, she becomes miserable and reclusive. The rest of her family also seems unhappy and unsettled. The situation escalates one day when Emma is in the attic alone. All of a sudden someone who looks exactly like Emma attacks her viciously. 

Emma is convinced that someone or something is haunting her, and she refuses to leave her house until she can piece the puzzle together, with the assistance of John Trevor, a sympathetic detective. Eventually, Emma suspects her parents of hiding skeletons in the closet from the family's past and practicing magical rituals using Wicca symbols seemingly stolen from Satanism. 

As the clues pile up, she discovers that she once had a sister named Beth, who died twelve days after Emma was born. Emma realizes that this identical apparition may actually be Beth returning to life. Emma witnesses Beth kill her brother, and the police suspect it was really Emma. John Trevor comes to the rescue when Beth is trying to strangle Emma to death, and leaves Emma with a gun. She suspects that her father was to blame and murders both her parents. When the police arrive, Emma threatens "John Trevor", who now claims to be a paramedic, with the gun he gave her. 

As she points the gun at Trevor, she is really pointing the gun at herself, and when she pulls the trigger, she kills herself. The police later discuss the incident, and Emma's former psychologist explains that Beth and Trevor were only in her mind. Another officer mentions that the previous owner of the house, Ava Strauss, mysteriously died. The psychologist says that houses do not kill people, but in this case it did. 

The film ends as a new family looks to buy the house. As a young girl about Emma's age explores the attic, "John Trevor", now a real estate agent called Ron, appears behind her and says they will be seeing a lot of each other.

Rating: 10 Stars

Saturday, March 29, 2025

The Forest, 2016

The Forest is a 2016 American supernatural horror film directed by Jason Zada and written by Ben KetaiNick Antosca, and Sarah Cornwell. The film stars Natalie DormerTaylor KinneyYukiyoshi Ozawa, and Eoin Macken.

The Forest Movie Poster 2016



TRAILER




PLOT

The majority of the story is set in Aokigahara, a forest at the northwest base of Mount Fuji in Japan known as a popular destination for those wanting to die by suicide. Sara Price receives a phone call from the Japanese police telling her that they believe her troubled twin sister, Jess, is dead after being seen entering the forest. Despite her fiancé Rob's concerns, Sara travels to Japan and arrives at the hotel where Jess was staying.

At the hotel, Sara meets a reporter named Aiden. They drink together, and Sara tells him of her parents' death. In reality, her father committed a murder–suicide, but she tells him they were killed by a drunk driver. Jess saw the bodies, but Sara did not. Aiden invites Sara to join him and a park guide, Michi, in searching for Jess in the forest. 

As they enter Aokigahara, Michi tells Sara that Jess has most likely killed herself, but Sara refuses to believe this, claiming that as a twin, she can "feel" that Jess is still alive.

In the forest, the group discovers a yellow tent that Sara recognizes as Jess's. With nightfall approaching, Michi suggests leaving a note for Jess and leaving, but Sara insists on staying. Aiden volunteers to stay with her. That night, Sara hears rustling in the bushes and believes it may be Jess. 

She runs after the sound and instead finds a Japanese girl, Hoshiko, who claims to know Jess. Hoshiko warns Sara not to trust Aiden and flees when she hears his voice. Sara attempts to follow but falls and loses her.

The next day, Aiden and Sara become lost. As they walk, Sara grows suspicious and demands Aiden's phone, where she finds a picture of Jess. Aiden denies any involvement with Jess, but Sara runs into the forest alone. She hears voices urging her to turn back and, upon turning around, sees a hanged body.

 She continues running but falls into a cave, where she wakes to find Hoshiko, who is revealed to be a yūrei and transforms into a demonic figure. Sara escapes the cave and finds a flip camera that reveals the night her parents died, showing her father's suicide.

 Aiden finds Sara and helps her out of the cave. After some convincing, they continue searching. Meanwhile, Rob arrives at the forest with a search party and Michi to look for the sisters.

Aiden takes Sara to an old ranger station he claims to have discovered while looking for her. Sara hears Jess's voice from a locked basement and finds a note suggesting Aiden is holding Jess captive.

 Convinced that he is a threat, Sara attacks and kills Aiden with a kitchen knife. As he dies, Sara realizes that Aiden was telling the truth and that the picture on his phone, the voice, and the note had all been hallucinations.

Still in the basement, Sara has a vision of the night her parents died. Her father's ghost appears and lunges at her, but she escapes by cutting his fingers off. Running into the forest, she sees Jess running toward the search party's lights. Sara calls out to her, but Jess cannot hear her.

 Sara then realizes her escape from the ranger station was another hallucination, and that she had cut herself while hallucinating her father's ghost and is now dying from blood loss in the basement. 

As she succumbs to her wounds, a group of yūrei pulls her beneath the forest floor. Jess, very much alive, is rescued by the search party and explains that the "feeling" of her sister is gone, and it is assumed that Jess knows Sara is dead. As the search party leaves, Michi spots a dark figure in the forest and realizes it is Sara, now a vengeful yūrei.


Rating: 10 Stars

Friday, March 28, 2025

I Spit on your Grave Series, 1978, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2019

Original series

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)
After a young writer (Camille Keaton) is brutally raped and left for dead by four men, she systematically hunts them down one by one to exact a terrible vengeance.




I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu (2019)
Forty years after a woman (Camille Keaton) gets revenge on her attackers, she faces the wrath of the families of the men she killed. She and her daughter (Jamie Bernadette) are kidnapped and have to face off against a gang of degenerates overseen by a violently unhinged matriarch.



Remake series

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
Jennifer (Sarah Butler), a writer, rents an isolated cabin in the country so she can work on her latest novel. The peace and quiet is soon shattered by a gang of local thugs who rape and torture her, then leave her for dead. But she returns for vengeance, trapping the men one by one. Jennifer inflicts pain on her attackers with a ferocity that surpasses her own ordeal. 


I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013) 
A young woman (Jemma Dallender) embarks on a merciless path of revenge after three men rape and torture her.



I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance Is Mine (2015) 
After joining a therapy group for rape victims, a woman (Sarah Butler) seeks grisly revenge against the perpetrators of the crimes.


Rating: 10 Stars

Morbius, 2022, Top 10 Netflix

Morbius is a 2022 American super-hero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment, Arad Productions, and Matt Tolmach Productions, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing as the third film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU). Directed by Daniel Espinosa and written by the writing team of Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, the film stars Jared Leto (who also served as an executive producer on the film) as Dr. Michael Morbius, alongside Matt SmithAdria ArjonaJared HarrisAl Madrigal, and Tyrese Gibson. In the film, Michael Morbius and his surrogate brother Milo (Smith) become living vampires after curing themselves of a rare blood disease.



TRAILER



PLOT

At a hospital in Greece, 10-year-old Michael Morbius welcomes his surrogate brother Lucien, whom he renames Milo; they bond over their shared blood illness and desire to be "normal". Seeing Michael's potential, their adoptive father and hospital director Nicholas arranges for Michael to attend medical school in New York while he focuses on caring for Milo.

25 years later, Michael publicly declines a Nobel Prize for his work with artificial blood. His colleague Martine Bancroft discovers he has secretly captured dozens of vampire bats from Costa Rica in the hope of splicing their genes with his own to cure his condition. Michael receives funding from Milo to outfit a private mercenary vessel in international waters with his equipment. While the cure works, it transforms Michael into a vampire who kills and drains the crew of their blood after they attack him out of fear. Once his bloodlust subsides and he regains his senses, a horrified Michael erases all CCTV footage of his experiment before contacting authorities and jumping overboard.

Michael returns to New York and discovers he now has superhuman strength, speed, and echolocation, with his vampire bats treating him as one of their own. To control his bloodlust, he subsists on his artificial blood as it gradually ceases to satisfy his needs. FBI agents Simon Stroud and Al Rodriguez investigate Michael's victims and deduce his involvement. Milo learns that Michael is cured but becomes furious when Michael refuses to cure him as well. While checking on a hospitalized Martine, Michael finds a dead nurse, drained of her blood. Believing he was responsible, he attempts to escape before being arrested by Stroud. In prison, he is visited by Milo and realizes Milo took his cure and killed the nurse. Michael escapes to confront him. An unrepentant Milo urges Michael to embrace his powers as he has. Unwilling to hurt his brother, Michael flees.

Michael meets Martine, acquires a new lab, and develops an antibody against vampirism to stop Milo; he also plans to use it on himself. Stroud and Rodriguez find footage of one of Milo's attacks and, believing Michael's vampirism to be spreading, release it to the media. Nicholas recognizes Milo and pleads with him to stop. Angered by Nicholas' perceived preference for Michael, Milo mortally wounds him; Michael arrives too late to save him while Milo also mortally wounds Martine. Martine dies in Michael's arms, forcing him to drink her blood. Michael summons an army of bats to restrain Milo and inject the antibody. Milo dies and Michael flies off with the bats, mourning his loved ones and embracing his identity as a vampire. Unbeknownst to him, Martine is resurrected, having ingested a drop of Michael's blood as he fed on her.

In two mid-credits scenes, Adrian Toomes is transported to Michael's universe from his own. Surmising that Spider-Man is somehow responsible, Toomes approaches the fugitive Michael and suggests that they form a team.

Rating: 10 Stars

Outlaw King, 2018

Outlaw King is a 2018 historical action drama film, co-written, produced, and directed by David Mackenzie. Chris Pine stars as Scottish kin...