4 Ridiculous Monsters Who Are Getting Their Own Horror Films
One of the most important parts of a successful horror movie is the villain. What would Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween be without Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers? Horror movies without credible villains tend to be instant garbage, like The Happening, in which the bad guys are trees and M. Night Shyamalan.
Unfortunately, Hollywood apparently no longer has any idea what's scary, because for this year's horror movie season they're just flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks. Just take a look at these upcoming films and try to force yourself to be afraid (SPOILER: You cannot).
Ouija -- An Actual Ouija Board
Hey, what's the best way to freak out a room full of kids under the age of 15? A Ouija board! The only problem is, once you figure out how they work, Ouija boards lose pretty much all of their appeal. It turns out that a bunch of people subconsciously tugging on a piece of plastic just isn't all that bone-chilling.
"Jeff will die from severe horse-dickening, so speak the spirits."
"Fuck you guys."
Unfortunately, Hollywood, on a streak of giving us movie versions of board games that absolutely no one wants to see, has teamed up with Hasbro to bring us Ouija, a movie about a bunch of teenagers getting murdered by their novelty fortune-telling device:
Somehow, none of these kids have any idea what a Ouija board is, despite the fact that they have permeated all levels of popular culture for the past several decades. Beyond that, this movie is quite possibly the strangest marketing tie-in of all time, because it is presenting us a world wherein your Ouija board may suddenly infest your house with violent poltergeists. Hasbro isn't exactly going to win a ton of new Ouija customers with this approach.
Although, admittedly, it's a better approach than "our toys may sexually assault you."
Have you ever watched someone else use a computer while you quietly look over their shoulder, marveling at how they add 10 unnecessary steps to simple tasks, like clicking the scroll bar or typing in the "http" portion of every web address they visit? Great, now imagine doing that for 90 minutes and you have the premise of Cybernatural, an upcoming horror movie that takes place entirely on one person's computer screen:
It's a supernatural revenge tale wherein the ghost of a girl who was cyberbullied into committing suicide haunts a group of dumbass teenagers that the world will never miss, but instead of coming after them the old-fashioned way, she attacks them through their computers, sort of like that movie Ghost in the Machine that absolutely none of you have seen. It kills them one after another by forcing them to commit suicide live on Skype. Prepare to be dazzled as the characters pull up the Wikipedia page for demonic possession and get murdered in front of webcams set up in just such a way that the action is centrally framed and well-lit.
Assholes can't figure out vertical video. You expect us to buy this camera work?
Motivational Growth -- An Evil, Talking Mold
There is no way to describe this movie without it sounding insane, so here goes: Motivational Growth is about a dead-end loser with an apartment so nasty that a giant clump of mold growing in his bathroom actually comes to life and tries to convince him to straighten out his life.
While that sounds like the makings of a misguided feel-good comedy, the mold (which looks like a giant poo) is actually evil, so his motivational speeches are laced with sinister intent for Jack, the film's do-nothing slacker protagonist. We're not sure what those intentions could be, beyond convincing Jack to never clean his bathroom, but we're pretty sure somebody is getting fed to that mold before the movie is over.
"I could really go for Mexican right now."
And, frankly, the mold can't be too evil if he's trying to convince Jack to get his priorities in order and move out of that should-be-condemned apartment. Motivational Growth may wind up being more uplifting than God's Not Dead.
At least the festering shit-pile in this is meant to be there.
A disquietingly large number of horror movies are about teenagers who are told not to go to a specific place and end up going there anyway only to be brutally turbo-murdered by some hulking violence monster. Nymph follows that exact premise, only in this film, the teenagers are being slain by an evil mermaid.
Instead of a seashell-bikini-clad teenager hanging out with a Jamaican crab and a senile seagull, Nymph's mermaid looks more like those horror-mouthed demon fish P.T. Barnum stitched together to sell sideshow tickets. So when this group of plucky teenagers creeps out to an old castle for some naked drug use, they discover that it is improbably patrolled by a bloodthirsty ocean witch.
"Don't worry; we included a sexy-naked mode. Because, come on, who the fuck are we kidding?"
We understand that mermaids weren't always cute and cuddly creatures singing songs about forks and bedazzling Lisa Frank folders, but that corner was clearly turned long ago. Trying to make mermaids creepy again is like trying to make a horror movie about a sentient tire that kills people.
A tire was also what was bartered for the effects.
For more from Ashe, check out Weird Shit Blog and The Book of Word Records.
For more monstrous absurdities, check out 4 Ways the New Godzilla Movie Ripped Off the Crappy '98 Flop and 4 Times News Channels Totally Ran Out of Shit to Talk About (for that one time a New Mexico news station mistook a 31-year-old horror movie for breaking news).
