It's Day 275 of my One movie a Day Challenge for 2023, which you can follow along with on my Letterboxd list.
It's also October 2nd 2023, and that means we are on Day 2 of both my own 31 Days of Hallowe'en challenge as well as being Day 2 of the 31DayOfHorrorChallenge being hosted by Nightmare on Film Street. I'm doing a Letterboxd list for that as well. And let's not forget, the 100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge that I have been taking part in this year. The Letterboxd list is here.
For my own challenge, today's themed movie is Frankenstein. I picked the version with Carrie Ann Moss.
The plot to this is fairly simple as a husband and wife team manage to create a fully functional human male from raw stem cells. When he begins to show signs of illness, they inject him with what should be a lethal dose of drugs. Assuming he's dead, they send him to the morgue, but the creature wakes up in the middle of his autopsy and escapes. As his illness worsens, he spends his final days in a blur of pain, anger and murder.
Okay, so this movie had me in tears. It's got to be one of the most tragic versions of the Frankenstein story outside of the actual book. I was both emotionally drained and grossed out at the same time. The gore in this movie is up a few notches but at the same time, there are moments when they hold back and it's off camera. That odd balance of when to show and not is used to perfection here.
Here's what I thought the downside of this film was; they didn't really do anything with it. They had this wicked premise started, with pardon the pun, the raw materials of stem cell research, and didn't use it. The actual Frankenstein characters Elizabeth and Victor, are smaller roles in this, giving Adam the Creature and the blind friend (played by Tony Todd) main roles. Which in itself is a great direction. But, if they were going to play the Frankensteins as evil cold villains, there was no real pay out in that direction. I did however, like the fact they focused what little they did on the Frankensteins via Elizabeth not Victor. They made Elizabeth the creator figure and really drew on the idea of a woman birthing/creating Adam the creature. The subplot of accelerated human growth vs natural was peppered throughout the movie, but never truly delved into. There is even a scene where we see an actual birthing video as a hooker talks to Adam about being born. But then it all got lost in the shuffle.
Day 2 for the Nightmare on Film Street 31DayHorrorChallenge theme is In A Cornfield. This one was a little tougher, as I wanted to stay away from the Children of the Corn franchise if I could. I ended up finding American Scarecrow. For a low budget indie film it held it's own.
The plot follows a group of construction workers who have been hired to fix up an old farm house owned by the bank. When they arrive there, they quickly learn that a young girl is living there. Finding her diary, one of the team members begins to piece together some of what happened to her when her family still owned the farm. The more she interacts with the young girl, the more her and her team upset Brother. Soon, Brother who has been guarding not just the farm house, but the cornfield where we learn he's buried the dead, decides to go on a killing spree.
There are two scenes in this film that happen in the cornfield. Both are chase and slash scenes. One at the 20 minute mark and one at the 60 minute mark. I'm not too sure if this movie was actually trying to be anything other than a urban legend slasher to be honest? There wasn't a lot of plot, but what was there at times almost seemed muddled. This movie could have almost used an extra ten minutes on it's run time to just expand a little on where it was trying to take you. The character of Sister plays almost like a red herring, which I liked to an extent.
So for today's entries into the challenges, we've got overlap with almost all of them. As this is the first time I've seen either movie, they make the 100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge list, as well as my One Movie A Day list (that would be Frankenstein).
Slither back in tomorrow to see what other tricks and treats I dug up.
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