Ne Zha (2019)

I had heard of this year's sequel only when looking up box office records, and then I saw that the original broke some too. I'm sure the vast majority of ticket sales for each were in their native land. Still, their ratings are strong, so I got curious how well they might appeal to an American animation fan. NZ1 is less popular, but I like to start at the beginning.

In old China, Taoist god Yuanshi Tianzun sees fit to split the Chaos Pearl, a powerful monster, into the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb, the latter of which he curses to celestial destruction in three years. He tells apprentice Taiyi Zhenren to infuse Ne Zha, the soon-to-be-born royal son of Li Jing and Lady Yin, with the Spirit Pearl. Jealous co-apprentice Shen Gongbao swipes that pearl for new dragon prince Ao Bing, leaving the Demon Orb for the other baby. Although Ne Zha is widely feared and apparently doomed to early death, his parents insist on raising him with Taiyi's training, albeit in isolation. They hope that shielding their son from the whole truth will make him better and happier, but lies rarely form an effective long-term solution, especially in the face of Shen's unorthodox approach to pursuing godhood....

KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

This may be the most on-the-nose movie title since Snakes on a Plane. I wondered if it would be similarly stupid in a self-aware way. When I saw that it was partly comedic and had a warm reception, I took a chance on it.

Korean pop girl group HUNTR/X, consisting of never-relaxing lead singer Rumi (Arden Cho for speech/Ejae for singing), dour dancer Mira (May Hong/Audrey Nuna), and eager-to-please rapper Zoey (Ji-young Yoo/Rei Ami), has a rare secret reason for performing: Their music and extreme popularity reinforce a mostly invisible barrier to keep soul-sucking demons out of the land. They also use mystical melee weapons to kill demons they meet on the wrong side of the barrier. They are on the verge of fully sealing away Demon Lord Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) when things start to go wrong. First Rumi's voice keeps cracking in rehearsals. Then a faux-friendly, disguised demon band, the Saja Boys, debuts to steal their fans, and the heroines don't dare fight in public. Then Saja Boys leader Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop/Andrew Choi) discovers compelling evidence that Rumi had a demon parent, which she hasn't told even Mira and Zoey -- but Jinu doesn't either, because he now feels kinship with Rumi. Their interactions become...complicated....

The Wailing (2016)

I don't remember learning about this South Korean TV movie before. Most likely, it was on an online list of great horrors. In any case, it was the only horror I found left on my Netflix list.

Officer Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won), a police officer for the village of Gokseong, comes to recognize a pattern: Locals covered in boils are growing violently insane before dying. A theory tying the symptoms to drugs is not entertained for long, and for some reason, nobody even mentions the possibility of a natural disease. Reportedly, the first case emerged shortly after the arrival of an unnamed, reclusive Japanese man (Jun Kunimura), the subject of many rumors, including that he is a ghost. Jong-goo pays him a visit with a translating deacon (Kim Do-yoon) and finds a ghastly shrine but nothing to justify an arrest. When Jong-goo's preteen or early teen daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) shows early signs of the condition, his wife (Jang So-yeon) calls on a shaman (Hwang Jung-min) for an exorcism. A strange woman in white (Chun Woo-hee) often appears with warnings, but Jong-goo doesn't know much about her or whether to trust her.

Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020)

A friend was hoping to watch Justice League Dark (2017) with me, but it wasn't on Max. He assured me that this sequel does not rely on viewers to know its predecessor. Indeed, Wikipedia's synopsis suggests only a tangential plot connection. Of course, familiarity with a lot of DC Comics characters helps.

Superman (Jerry O'Connell) leads Earth-affiliated heroes against Apokolips, home planet of Darkseid (Tony Todd), possibly the biggest threat in the DC Universe. They face an army infused with Superman's DNA and lose tremendously. Most of the movie takes place two years later, when a handful of still viable heroes, including a poisoned Superman, reluctant sorcerer John Constantine (Matt Ryan), troubled half-demon Raven (Taissa Farmiga), and a bitter Robin (Stuart Allen), band together to stop Darkseid from mining Earth's core to a deadly degree.

Wendell & Wild (2022)

In my continuing quest for Halloween-type movies that I haven't seen before and might want to, I accepted Netflix's up-front suggestion, which they had pushed quite a bit last year. It has fared a bit better with critics than with general audiences, but hey, I've seen and reviewed less popular on this blog.

At 13, delinquent Kat (Lyric Ross) gets transferred to a Catholic girls' boarding school in her fading former hometown, Rust Bank. There she discovers a captive demon (Phoebe Lamont) who makes her a "hell maiden" able to summon Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele), two disgraced sons of underworld lord Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames). She wants them to bring back her parents (Gary Gatewood and Gabrielle Dennis), whose deaths she had accidentally caused ages ago. The boys stumble on the revitalizing properties of their dad's hair cream. They also learn that two execs (Maxine Peak and David Harewood) could pay them enough money to start their own afterlife amusement park -- provided they use the cream only on the dead councillors who could sway the vote in favor of turning Rust Bank into a prison complex, a motion otherwise unanimously opposed. Let's just say demons aren't so good with promises. But despite Kat's efforts to avoid friendships lest she jinx more people, she can get a fair amount of support from certain students and faculty to save both the town and herself.

Allegro Non Troppo (1976)

It's rare for me to take a movie suggestion from an anonymous online stranger, especially when I'm sure I won't have the same opinion. In this case, someone claimed that ANT is even better than Fantasia, which it openly mimics. I discovered that it's not available on Netflix but can be watched in its entirety for free on YouTube. And it's only 85 minutes.

To be honest, I didn't even watch all 85 minutes, because I skipped most of the live-action sequences, which run longer than in F. These sequences, depicting the filmmakers before and after the animations, are typically comedic, but they're certainly not the main draw (no pun intended). Just try finding those clips separate from the rest. As for the musical parts, well, they vary in mood as well as value. I'll review each in order of presentation.

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

I browsed Netflix for a good end to the month and came across this title. Why wasn't it on my list already? After all, I liked The Conjuring, and the first sequel was reputed to be almost as good. I'm just not in the habit of watching horror sequels.

Around Christmas of 1977, shortly after their Amityville incident, paranormal experts Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) are invited to the London Borough of Enfield. The Hodgsons, consisting of mother Peggy (Frances O'Connor) and four kids, have lately had stressful domestic conflict and an abortive Ouija effort, both of which are said to feed into an unwelcome presence, and the ensuing events have been frightful enough to make them seek shelter with neighbors. These events, including apparent part-time possession of 11-year-old Janet (Madison Wolfe), are attributed to the hostile spirit of a prior resident (Bob Adrian). The Catholic Church won't authorize an exorcism without compelling evidence. That's where the Warrens come in, coordinating with convinced investigator Maurice Grosse (Simon McBurnie) and doubtful psychologist Anita Gregory (Franka Potente). But Lorraine, with her psychic connections, gets the feeling that this mission will be more dangerous than any they've tackled before....

Dreams (1990)

Wisely marketed by Netflix as "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams," this is my first anthology viewing since...well, another Kurosawa piece. It's also from later in his career than anything else I've seen. I figured I'd like it better than Dodes'ka-den, partly because dreams are bound to be at least close to fantasy.

There are eight stories, generally set in 20th-century Japan. In "Sunshine Through the Rain," a young boy ignores his mother's warning not to go into the woods on a day with the titular weather, because kitsune have weddings then and don't brook human witnesses. In "The Peach Orchard," another boy, missing the peach trees that his family clearcut, sees their strangely human-shaped spirits. In "The Blizzard," four mountain climbers are on the verge of succumbing, possibly to the yuki-onna, before reaching their camp. In "The Tunnel," a former WWII commander walks through a tunnel and meets the ghosts of men who died following his orders and don't know it yet. In "Crows," a budding artist imagines(?) himself meeting an anglophone Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese!) in France and traversing the scenes of several paintings. In "Mount Fuji in Red," a nuclear meltdown rapidly depopulates the volcanic area, with most people deciding they'd rather drown than face cancer. In "The Weeping Demon," on another mountain, radioactivity has effectively turned humans into demons in a Buddhist hell. And in "Village of the Waterfalls," a traveler discovers a contented Luddite village.

Under the Shadow (2016)

Hmm, a purportedly feminist mid-2010s horror-drama in Farsi, with a director who's part Iranian and part British, faring moderately on IMDb and extremely well on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw one of those about five years ago. But this one has a plot less like that and more like The Babadook.

Life is scary enough for anyone in Tehran during the War of the Cities in the mid-'80s. Shideh (Narges Rashidi) may have it harder than most: She can't finish her medical education thanks to her prior political involvement, her husband (Bobby Naderi) is assigned to a doctoral post in a dangerous zone, and she's left alone to take care of their maybe five-year-old daughter, Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). But the real scares come only after the dust settles from an Iraqi missile hitting their apartment building. As things make less and less sense, Shideh finds it hard to continue denying the rumor, held by Dorsa and certain neighbors, that the missile brought one or more jinni.

Hereditary (2018)

Reception of this film varies wildly. Critics tend to laud it as a new classic, most general audiences give it average to moderately high ratings, and CinemaScore makes it out to be a dud. If nothing else, I would see Toni Collette in a horror role for the first time since The Sixth Sense. (She was getting sick of those and doesn't normally like horror, but this script called to her.)

The story begins with the apparently natural death of a reclusive, mysterious old woman who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, but given what else happens, it probably wasn't that. She had had a complicated relationship with her daughter, Annie (Collette), who doesn't know how to feel about her death. Annie's 16-year-old son, Peter (Alex Wolff), is a little more rebellious than most because of past incidents that defy recovery. Her 13-year-old daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro), is far stranger and more disturbing, no doubt thanks to far more exposure to Grandma. As the title implies, Grandma's legacy lives on, in a bad way. But genetics has only a little to do with it. Of greater concern are her occult interests...and the locals who share them....

Dead of Night (1977)

I'm not sure what got this TV movie with a 6.4 on IMDb onto my queue. Someone other than Netflix must have suggested it to me. Anyway, it's not like Night of the Living Dead. It's an anthology more along the lines of The Twilight Zone, starting with a Rod Serling-style narration that explains the title as referring to "a state of mind."

In "Second Chance," a young enthusiast for classic cars restores one from 1926, takes an old road, and finds himself literally in 1926. In "No Such Thing as a Vampire," around the time of Dracula, a woman keeps waking up with a bleeding neck, and her husband and servants can no longer shrug off the village rumors. In "Bobby," a woman appeals to a pagan deity to bring back her drowned son, but he's not quite the same anymore and becomes increasingly hostile.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I don't normally watch movies with middling ratings across the three major sites, especially in genres that aren't among my favorites. But this one did spawn quite a few sequels, launch some fledgling careers, and make #9 on a Nostalgia Critic list of best recent Halloween movies/series. Besides, [REC] taught me that even without originality, a "found-footage" flick can scare me.

The story begins somewhat in medias res in 2006, when Micah (Micah Sloat) buys a camera and tripod in response to cohabiting girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston) telling him that strange things happen around her at night, supposedly thanks to a malevolent spirit. He doesn't really expect to catch anything spectacular -- maybe he hopes to reassure her that it's all in her head -- but as weeks pass, the signs get harder and harder to dismiss as natural or harmless occurrences. When they invite vaunted ghost expert Dr. Fredrichs (Mark Fredrichs), he soon declares it the work of a demon instead, and the demonologist he recommends is unavailable for now.

The Conjuring (2013)

All month until now, I'd seen movies that end with a notice that the depicted characters and events are fictitious -- even Blade Runner 2049, for crying out loud. This one boasts a basis in true events, with only a few changes for entertainment's sake (e.g., compressing a decade into weeks). Such claims are especially common for horrors about exorcism, probably because more people today believe in ghosts and demons than in, say, werewolves. At any rate, we know that it is partly true, insofar as the major players (among living humans, anyway) have existed and had connections with each other; two served as consultants on the film.

The main setting is a rural Rhode Island mansion in 1971. I'm not sure why the Perron family moved into a home so old and disused without learning much about it ahead of time, but I guess two spouses and five daughters don't have many options both comfortably large and affordable. Perhaps their first warning that there are worse things in it than dust and cobwebs is that the dog adamantly refuses to enter. As phenomena get increasingly difficult to explain, the Perrons turn to demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, perhaps best known for their part in the story that inspired The Amityville Horror. Despite their expertise, the Warrens remain apprehensive; not only do exorcisms (including those of buildings rather than people) end badly sometimes, but Lorraine recently had some unshared mental trauma that might compromise her ability. And one of the perceived entities herein threatens the Warrens' daughter elsewhere....

House (1977)

As with my previous viewing, I was warned that this gets strange. Unlike my previous viewing, it is too escapist to make any attempt at relevance. Cracked.com described a few scenes that put it among the five weirdest horror movies they knew, and I thought it should be higher up from their description. I probably would have skipped it if not for its showing at AFI (not that I watched it there), its enduring cult, and my desire to have a good lineup for October.

A synopsis sounds ridiculously simple and hackneyed: Seven high school girls decide to take a vacation at the remote mansion of one's aunt, which, as you probably guessed, is haunted. But House (a.k.a. Hausu) is ridiculous in the finer details, to the point that I can hardly think of another picture like it. Even contemporary Japanese found it bizarre.

Time Bandits (1981)

I mentioned that I would see another consecutive movie about a boy. Thankfully, it's quite different. In fact, despite the PG rating, I hesitate to count it as a family flick. IMDb doesn't. (Non-American studios, I find, are more likely to have kid-unfriendly stories starring kids.)

Kevin, 11, suffers from parents uninterested in his interest in history. One night, his bedroom is accidentally invaded by six time-traveling dwarves. They're interested in history, of course, but not for the same reason: They want to steal the riches of the past. Despite his disapproval of that plan, Kevin tags along, with nary a language barrier. He learns that they've worked for the Supreme Being himself on maintenance of the space-time continuum, and since they swiped his temporal map, they have to keep moving. (They've been around for eons but seem as vulnerable as humans.) Little do they realize that the scarier threat is from Evil himself, looking to grab the map for his own ends.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)

Much as I dug Monty Python in my teens, I get nervous about checking out Terry Gilliam-directed movies. I liked Twelve Monkeys but found Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas unwatchable. This one, despite its so-so reception, intrigued me with the visual artistry shown in the preview; I could at least expect that much.

The titular object is a sort of magic mirror that allows you to step into a realm shaped by the imaginations of you and whoever else is there. Despite this fascinating quality, few modern Londoners show any interest in the old-fashioned carnival-style presentation by Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his comrades. Those who do enter tend to be given a choice between a tough self-improvement plan and the seductive path of sin...to death, which may explain why the police keep showing up. But these aren't the heaviest things weighing on Parnassus' mind: The devil (Tom Waits), going by "Mr. Nick," is about to call on him for an immortality fee, namely daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), because this is one of those stories where you can sell others' souls. Things start to look up when Mr. Nick offers a new wager: The first to draw five souls to the corresponding goal in the Imaginarium wins Valentina. And the souls start coming fast with an enigmatic new barker, Tony (Heath Ledger*).

Kwaidan (1964)

Yup, another 1960s horror set in feudal Japan already. But there are key differences, starting with the fact that this piece is a compilation of four stories, with no recurring characters between them. I hadn't seen a film like that since before I started this blog.

Might as well summarize them in order of presentation. In "Black Hair," a samurai gets a divorce against his wife's pleas, not because there's anything wrong with their relationship, but because he's seen an opportunity to marry into wealth; as you can imagine, he lives to regret it. In "The Woman in the Snow," a frosty demoness spares a man's life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her, which gets tempting when he falls for a reminiscent beauty. In "Hoichi the Earless," a blind shamisen player gets unknowingly solicited by ghosts to play a ballad about the battle that killed them, prompting his caretakers to fear for his place in the land of the living. In "In a Cup of Tea," a samurai sees a face clearly not his own reflection in (wait for it) a cup of tea, and his reaction does not please the owner of that face....

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

Now that October has come, I've started a string of viewings appropriate to Halloween. Not all of them horrors, mind you. This rather light drama probably never scared anyone much. But the titular devil isn't just a figure of speech.

Surprise: Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) is not one of the two most prominent characters; he kind of hovers in the background until the third act. Instead, Jabez Stone (James Craig, listed at the bottom of the abbreviated IMDb cast!), a New Hampshire farmer with a streak of bad luck in 1840, disregards his strong Christian mother (Jane Darwell) and wife (Anne Shirley) by privately declaring that he'd sell his soul for two cents. Of course, the sudden visitor who goes by the rather forthright name of Scratch (Walter Huston) offers far more than that to seal the deal: a guaranteed seven years of economic prosperity, followed immediately by payment. Stone takes Scratch's word for it that a soul is basically nothing -- which forms a fraction of his defense later on....

Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922)

Yup, another foreign film right after the last, this one involving an allegedly more genuine brand of magic. Last Halloweeny pic I'll watch for some time, I warrant; Netflix just had a long wait on it.

It's only the second silent so-called "documentary" I've seen, after the reportedly dishonest Nanook of the North. (You can watch the William S. Burroughs-dubbed version from 1968 on the same disc if you hate reading intertitles or want to save time, but I prefer the powerful classical score to the quirky jazz. I don't think the later one uses helpful tinting either.) In truth, while this Swedish-Danish collaboration does start out looking like a presentation along the lines of An Inconvenient Truth, complete with rare first-person narration by the researcher, it soon goes on to reenactment with license a la "America's Most Wanted" and feels more like historical fiction. Which makes it no less enjoyable.

The Devil's Advocate (1997)

Still watching vaguely Halloweeny movies, am I? That comes of neglecting to rearrange my queue in time. It's also a movie I initially marked "Not interested," probably because I wanted to make time for something else, not because I expected to dislike it. Was it worth adding? I think so, but you'll notice that's hardly a strong answer.

Two years before Keanu played a super pseudo-messiah in The Matrix and three years after his turn as a heroic cop in Speed, he starred as law-abiding yet rather corrupt lawyer Kevin Lomax in DA (heh, appropriate abbreviation). Of course, the real draw for viewers must be Al Pacino as suspiciously named CEO John Milton, who takes a special interest in Lomax and his nigh inexplicably perfect track record. I hardly call it a spoiler that Milton creates steam by sticking his finger in holy water; the posters alone give a big hint to his identity, even if it takes Lomax most of the 2 hours and 24 minutes to catch on.