October Horror Movie Challenge 2018 - Pledge and Play Along at Home! #OHMC18

For months it lay dormant, now the October Horror Movie Challenge has arisen once again!  The rules for the challenge are, as always, that across the 31 days of October, you must watch at least 31 horror movies, and at least half of those (so 16 or more) must be ones that you are seeing for the first time.  Well, I have a big ol' stack of stuff I've been gathering mostly from charity shops across the year, ready to watch on a random draw basis.  Also, the London Film Festival is on, and I'm already booked for a bunch of the cult titles they are showing. My current record is 43 films, let's try for even better.

As in previous years, I'm doing this sponsored for Crisis, so please donate what you can.  I am likely to turn my brain inside out going through the discards gained from Oxfam shops, lets have at least something good come from the experience.  Also, as in previous years, I have a few recommendations of some recent/upcoming releases that you might want to try if you'd like to try the challenge yourself.  One good source of films I can recommend right now is Shudder, a very good streaming site with a great selection of horror titles I checked out earlier this year.  If you already have Amazon prime channels, you can access it there too.  Let's take a look then at some films to get you started with your own journey into fear this year, starting with something coming out on DVD tomorrow...

Dear British Film Institute...

Let me make clear where I am coming from with what I am about to say.  I am a long time supporter of your works, for over six years now, with the last few being at Champion Membership level.  I regularly attend events at Southbank, including the always fun Mark Kermode Live in 3D nights since 2016, I've often bought friends along to these, and I always eagerly anticipate your DVD & Blu Ray releases.  What's more, I am an enthusiastic attendee at the London Film Festival (#LFF), and have been for four years now; I'm greatly looking forward to August 30th when all will be revealed and September when I can start booking (hell, I've already booked time off work for it!).  However, it's one aspect of scheduling that I am writing this open letter regarding, so let's get right to the point...

I will not attend any #LFF screenings held at Picturehouse venues, unless they start paying Living Wage to their staff.

Avengers Infinity War: THE SPOILER ZONE

You are entering another dimension.  A dimension of truths before their time.  A dimension that violates causality if you enter enter unprepared.  You are about to enter... the Spoiler Zone!

Noroi: The Curse

Recently, I finally entered the 2010s and signed up to a streaming video service.  No, not Netflix or Amazon Prime.  You see, I have a pretty big backlog of unwatched DVDs and Blu Rays to go through, and I know that I went for something with libraries as big as the ones they have, chances are I'd never get to those piles, they'll still be collecting dust come next Christmas.  What I decided to try was one that's horror specific, called Shudder.  There's a bundle of titles on there I've been interested in for a while, but not so much that I'll need to shell out for more than a month or so to get through all I'm there for.

The main reason I started my free trial of Shudder was to check out a film my brother had mentioned on his blog, Hell House, LLC.  It's a found footage movie that, rather just present it as a raw stream of the footage as filmed, instead is edited and presented like a documentary that has gotten a hold of the footage later, which has a few extra advantages.  That one is pretty good, and I recommend you check out it, if not on Shudder then on one of the other streaming services it's on, like Prime if you have it.  However, what I want to talk about is another film along those lines, a Japanese one from 2005, thus just before the real flood of found footage films began, called Noroi: The Curse.

The Lego Batman Movie

The first film of my most looked forward to list has been released annnnddd.... it's really good!  But it's not The Lego Movie great, it does have a few issues holding it back from that.

The Limitless Diary - T2 Trainspotting

Hey folks, so I finally picked up an Odeon Limitless Card, after wembling about it for a while.  I used to have an Unlimited Card with Cineworld, but a) Odeons are slightly easier for me to get to, and b) they’re generally a bit nicer and less… sticky compared to Cineworld.  Since I’m going to be checking out more stuff at no extra cost, I thought I’d update on here more regularly as I go, keep exercising the creative muscles.  This is going to mostly about reviews and the like, but I may have the odd tangental topic on here (although I’m banning myself from going off on a rant about mobile phone use.. for now).  I guess with a deeply uncertain world right now, I’m also doing this because I seriously need a bit more escapism.  Let’s see how this goes, starting with...

October Horror Movie Challenge 2016 - Play along at home! #OHMC2016

Time again for me to engage in that most mysterious of internet film geek traditions*, the October Horror Movie Challenge.  31 Days, at least 31 Horror Movies, NO EXCUSES!!!  Once again, I'm doing it sponsored for Crisis, so if you can spare a few pennies, that would be most generous of you.

This year though, I thought I'd preface the challenge itself with something that can help you play along if you so wish.  Finding the right titles to watch can be a bit of a minefield, because I will be the first to admit that, with the horror genre these days, there’s a lot of crap out there.  So here’s a very quick look at a few recent releases that may have flown under your radars, which are well worth your time (and a lot of these are available to stream or are cheap on HMV's shelves right now, so no need to go digging!).  What’s more, I guarantee that none of these end with either “they were dead all along” or “it was the lead character’s split personality”!