You Are Not My Mother Horror House Review

 

I was flicking through the various movie streaming services I pay for looking for something horror related but a little bit different, I put the trailer on for this film and instantly decided that this was something I needed to see.

The film starts with a baby in a stroller. A woman takes this baby into the woods and places her in a circle and then starts a fire around it. The movie then shifts into the present day. A teenager called Char has overslept and asks her grandma for a ride to school as she is going to be late but her grandmother says that she cannot do it because her legs hurt too much. Char’s Grandma suggests that she goes and asks her mother to see if she can take her.

This drive to school is awkward with Char first asking her mother how she is before asking if she can go to the store after dropping her off to get some food as there is nothing in the house. The mother Angela says she is tired but, in all honesty, she seems like she is worn out and barely holding on. Given the title of the film this made me instantly start to wonder if there was a problem with Char. Was this girl some kind of demon spawn was that why we had seen her placed in a circle of fire at the start was this an attempt to get rid of her, and is the mother tired and mentally worn down because this demon child was somehow draining her?

Following Char to school we find out that she is a real outsider, she has no friends and is being bullied by a large group of girls but it gets even worse for her after school, when she is walking home, she sees her mother's car left abandoned. Later that night her mother returns home. She isn't acting how she normally does though.

I can’t really say much more about this film without spoiling it, for me it is one of those films where you need to be pulled along and kept guessing to truly get the most from it. If you are anything like me then you will question the situation is this a film about mental health or the supernatural? I enjoyed the film but if your into action based horror this is not going to be your thing it’s a slower more thought provoking piece if you want to see buckets of blood this is not the film for you, if you want to watch a very talented actress play a woman who is either possessed or very mentally ill while you try to weigh up all the options in your mind then you will love this film Carolyn Bracken deserves series credit for making this film what it is and being scary as hell. I would give it 6 out of 10, its worth a watch but its not a classic that you will find yourself returning to again and again.

 

So, what we have here with The Furies is an Ozploitation flick, a relatively low budget horror film made in Australia. The one thing The Furies isn't is original: it's a little bit Hostel, a little bit Hunger Games, and a lot of 80’s style slasher But despite its lack of originality if you like your Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers flavoured films then I am sure that you will find this film to be an absolute hoot the director Tony D'Aquino absolutely douses the screen in blood in this film his debut feature but he also kind of managed to stick two fingers up at many a copyright and gets away with it.

The film opens as two friends, Kayla and Maddie, are abducted, they are then rendered unconscious. Kayla wakes up inside a wooden black coffin like box in the middle of a remote forest with her friend Maddie nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t take long for Kayla to discovers that she and the other young women are being hunted by a group of masked killers, a bunch of masked killers who look like low rent copies of Leather Face, Jason and various other classic slashers. Each of these maniacs is armed with the kind of grizzly sharp weapons that you would imagine. I don’t want to give every single bit of the plot away as it kind of turns and winds while constantly throwing cliches at you, but what it offers on an equal level to cliché is gore, this film is an absolute gore hounds funfest. If you want to see things slashed, smashed ripped and torn in a spray of blood then this is most definitely the film for you.

None of the cast were people that I recognised in the slightest but I have to admit that Airlie Dodds is a very good leading lady and it is very easy to find yourself rooting for her. The gore is great it all looks very real, lots of lovely practical effects here no dodgy CGI to cringe over but most importantly in my opinion is the films pacing which is absolutely on point, the film is around 80 minutes but it really feels like it is constantly racing forward never stopping or slumping and ending at a point which feels like a natural ending but also leaves you wanting more and hoping for a sequel.

If you like gore and 80’s slashers in particular then this film will be right up your alley. Like I have said it is far from original the film is made up of all kinds of bits and pieces of plenty of films you will have seen before but I think what is there is pieced together really well to make a fun and interesting film which I can’t help but heartily recommend, to this end I find myself giving this film an 8 out of 10, sure its not going to change the world but it is a good fun film full of interesting if not original ideas and grizzly deaths.

The Silence Horror House Review

 

So, what we have here is a film which is basically about little monsters that can basically be described as prehistoric cave gremlin bat hybrids. On their own one of these creatures would be a serious pain but the real problem is that they don’t arrive on their own they tend to arrive in swarms, it’s like what if we remade Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds with what H R Giger drew while smoking weed and looking at bats.

We follow the Andrews family which consists of Hugh Andrews, his wife, his son, his mother-in-law and most importantly for the story his daughter Ally who suffers from acute deafness, and communicates in sign language, now not to give too much away but this is something which you would think would be a weakness but actually turns out to give the family a useful tool.

The Silence very much feels like a hodgepodge of ideas from other films, it feels like there is a sprinkle of The Mist here and a pinch of Cloverfield there. I think with the deaf daughter it feels like it has this one idea that it really wants to lean heavily into and to hang its hat off, it feels a little bit like a one trick pony at times. What the film did well for me at least is to establish its characters well giving them enough time to develop effectively which in turn helps you to care about them and their fate, I think the film does a pretty good job of making them feel like a real family with multi layered relationships within it, you not only know who these people are but what they all mean to each other and I would put a lot of this down to very good acting.

I especially have to give props to Stanley Tucci who provides a strong lead, I think the film did a good job of setting up its post-apocalyptic world but later on the film seemed to lose its step a little, I don’t want to talk about the plot piece by piece but there’s a point for me where the story just swerves off, add to this that for me the film ends rather abruptly. Part of me feels that this would have worked better as a short mini series with a few ideas expanded upon and a more definitive ending. I think the film sets up the potential for a lot of ingesting ideas but doesn’t see enough of them through but I suppose at least it doesn’t outstay its welcome the very fact I wish there was a little more is a lot better than getting to a point where I keep looking at my watch praying for it to end.

For me this was an enjoyable but equally forgettable film, it happily filled an hour and a half of my time and I liked it but I also don’t feel like I will feel any urge to return to it in the future but that’s ok, not every film needs to be a stone-cold classic, I would give it a 6 out of 10.