killers – Movies of the Soul

Vampire Owl: So, more youngsters are trying to make contact with the dead.

Vampire Bat: Yes, you needn’t be bothered as this is not about the undead.

Vampire Owl: Nobody can contact us through the portal. It has natural resistance.

Vampire Bat: There is absolutely nothing natural about the portal.

Vampire Owl: Doctor Frankenstein has arranged for the natural resistance.

Vampire Bat: If the crazy scientist is involved, it is is surely not natural.

Vampire Owl: You continue to underestimate the doctor.

Vampire Bat: I make no estimate of such a pseudo-scientist.

Vampire Owl: You know that the Frankenstein monster is real.

Vampire Bat: So are his 2897 accidental creations, which are of no use.

[Gets a vancho cake and three glasses of strawberry shake].

What is the movie about? :: At Edelvine Academy for Girls, Alice (Inanna Sarkis), Bethany (Madisen Beaty) and other girls play a prank on their friends by faking the appearance of the Edelvine Ghost, an urban legend about a student who killed herself – soon, one of their friends, Kerrie (Megan Best), is found dead in the academy hostel, having fallen from her window. A new student Camille (Suki Waterhouse) who has been on the waiting list for the academy admission for a long time, gets the seat which has been left vacant by the death of Kerrie. The headmistress, Mrs Landry (Marina Stephenson Kerr) considers the death as an unfortunate accident, and is happy to have her there. Camille does feel that there is something wrong with the room. She becomes friends with Helina (Ella-Rae Smith), but gets in a fight with Alice and Bethany’s gang including Yvonne (Stephanie Sy), Rosalind (Djouliet Amara) and Lenora (Jade Michael), and gets beaten up by Alice with the help of her friends. The headmistress sends them to detention in the library until a certain amount of archiving is complete.

So, what happens with the events here as we just keep looking? :: The girls, despite their differences, decide to work together for the time being to finish the job as soon as possible and get out of there. It is during the detention that Alice convinces the group including Carmille and Helina to join her in a seance meant to contact Kerrie’s spirit and what actually happened. The two get the feeling that this is only a prank, but everyone finds things go out of control as they really seems to make contact with a spirit which tells them that they are going to be murdered by someone only mentioned as “her”. They are not sure if the spirit belongs to Kerrie or the original spirt which is part of the urban legend. Later in the night, Lenora moves away from the others to a lonely area to text a possible future boyfriend, but ends up seeing a masked figure. Soon, she is attacked and killed by the same strange figure. Mrs Landry feels that Lenora had run away as her personal items are missing along with her. Camille feels that her room might still be haunted by Kerrie, and there are enough dark spaces in the building for them to be scared.

And what more is with the girls and the ghosts around here in a world of chaos? :: The police and the parents feels that Lenora might have run away with the man with whom she became acquainted online. With the help of the man in charge of the rooms, Trevor (Seamus Patterson) who also happens to be the son of the headmistress, they get into Lenora’s room and find a strange cross made out of blood on the bed. They identify the symbol as part of the pendant worn by the girl who had killed herself and became Edelvine Ghost. Soon enough, Rosalind would be next person to be murdered by the unknown figure. Her death is considered to be an accident, but has the girls very much worried about what might happen next. Another one of the girls also notice a masked figure in the room, but the headmistress still dismisses it as a strange dream. The girls feel that time is running out for them, and if a solution is not found out soon enough, they are all going to disappear or die soon enough. Yet, it doesn’t make much of sense.

The defence of Seance :: The effects that this movie seems to use for horror seems to be of great quality. There is a fine atmosphere for the horror to grow at all times. The sound effects also nicely contribute to the same. The music is also very nice, and contributes well to the overall atmosphere of the movie – we do feel that it makes us feel more engaged with the whole thing. You think that this is going in one direction, and then there is another dimension to the whole thing – we notice the music changing accordingly, and there are always some fine settings to contribute to the horror. The presence of something sinister is also there, and with the fine use of darkness, the movie assures one of the same. The makers surely know how to get the best ingredients, and arrange them. There are some dialogues which seem to be coming randomly, but they are all of some significance. There are so many directions which this movie could choose, and we can see that it doesn’t try to go for the usual, which has served right – as Robert Frost would say about the road not that much taken making the difference.

Positives and negatives :: The movie has one nice twist to the killings which is pretty much an interesting surprise as the clues wouldn’t lead to the killings that easily. There are many red herrings present in here, as a ghost isn’t everything that we need to suspect around here. They mystery is strong, and there are enough suspects around here for one to await more deaths to happen. It is strange that there are many negative reviews to keep this one down, as we come to know that there is more to this than what can be seen after the first few minutes itself. You have the feeling that this could be Ouija and its sequels or I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequels – this one has the killer and the ghostly presence, which means that your guess can most probably just go wrong. It could have still made the murders look better – even the shower murder scene goes wasted in here. Yet, the girls are too good, especially Suki Waterhouse, Inanna Sarkis and Madisen Beaty who blends in nicely with a possibility to become bigger scream queens of future, Suki also having some fine action sequences – reminds one of The Hunt fights.

How it finishes :: Seance is one find surprise horror movie that seems to have made an impact out of nowhere. We often have the tendency to underestimate movies like these, but some horror films have the skills to lift themselves up despite what you think, especially with so many negative reviews around. There is more than what meets the eye here, and there is the mixture of more than one genre as things come together. Well, horror is rarely one thing – even in real life, there is more than one kind of terror – we had different ones here, from nipah virus to corona virus, excess rainfall leading to floods, rising prices of fuel and the possibility of descending into chaos from what seemed to be good order. The reality of horror which prevails in this thankless world where evil people get the best results can be often more terrifying for people. Otherwise, we will always have movies like this one. Amazon Prime Video has the right horror movie this time, rising very high above last year’s Madres, The Manor and Black as Night.

Release date: 21st May 2021
Running time: 92 minutes
Directed by: Simon Barrett
Starring: Suki Waterhouse, Madisen Beaty, Ella-Rae Smith Inanna Sarkis, Marina Stephenson-Kerr, Seamus Patterson

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@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Vampire Owl: I have always loved letter with some colour on them.

Vampire Bat: You are talking about those letters which were dipped in blood?

Vampire Owl: We are now getting bloody letters through the usual platform?

Vampire Bat: Yes, the usual letters are no longer used, especially after he had that iron mask.

Vampire Owl: Is this a new method of identification?

Vampire Bat: Yes, for the letters which are meant for the Dracula Castle.

Vampire Owl: I thought that he no longer accepts letters.

Vampire Bat: You don’t know Uncle Dracula well enough.

Vampire Owl: What is there to know now? We have been with him for very long.

Vampire Bat: There is a lot more that we don’t know, and much more to be found out. Uncle Dracula will remain a mystery for longer than we can expect.

[Gets a mango cake and three cups of mixed tea].

What is the movie about? :: Melanie Edwards (Dawn Van de Schoot) had a divorce just recently, and has moved into a new neighbourhood with her daughter Madison Edwards (Hailey Foss) and her son Timothy Edwards (Kaeleb Zain Gartner). It seems to be an interesting neighbourhood, even though they don’t make many friends out there. Things go even further weird, as they receive mysterious letters asking them to kill the neighbours mentioned in their letters, or they will be killed. Melanie is surprised that she is asked to murder Alice Huang (Arielle Rombough), a girl living a few houses away, whom she admires a lot, and are of mutual help. Timothy finds out that he has to murder a strange man who doesn’t talk much, but is seen outside regularly while walking his cat. Madison finds it to be the strangest, as she is asked to murder her boyfriend who is supposed to be a lot older than her, and lives a strange lifestyle – her parents always disapproved of him.

So, what happens with the events here? :: Melanie feels that she could make things better by visiting Alice and her husband Lewis Huang (Michael Tan) who becomes suspicious about her due to a knife pointing out of her bag, and it leads to an exchange of words, and later a fight which leads to Melanie stabbing Lewis on the neck while Alice looks helplessly with her toddler. Meanwhile, the man whom Timothy was supposed to kill reach their home, and after looking at it for some time, starts making attempts to break the door and get in. Madison escapes through the window to find her boyfriend, while the man almost kills Timothy, only for Melanie to intervene, and kill him instead. Now, the question remains about what would happen to them with the whole town going berserk. Who will be killed, and who all can manage to survive without killing anyone? A group known as The Unknown takes responsibility for the problem, and police finally decides to take things seriously. But how many people will be dead by then?

The defence of Red Letter Day :: The idea is the one that strikes us the most as far as Red Letter Day is concerned, and the rest only follows. The thoughts about what people would do for survival, and when having the feeling that the family itself is undergoing a terrible crisis, is something that one needs to think about. But what becomes more scary is that this idea of murdering people is not just for survival as everyone in the movie are concerned – some people just seem to do the same for fun, with inherent evil in humans showing the presence. It proves that people are intrinsically bad, and do not trust others – violence is part of nature, as many poets have proven. Some moments are funny, and it makes the slasher feeling light. As this is quite a short movie, the plot which is too simple and doesn’t have much in it could be handled well enough. There are also very less number of characters, and so the complication is not there at all.

The claws of flaw :: There is a little bit too much blood and gore in this movie, which might not have been the right thing to do, when we consider the fact this was not really supposed to be of slasher genre. People might find it difficult to believe that something like this would happen – that people would just kill each other because of some letters, as they won’t accept the inherent evil. It is the same kind of people who keep questioning movies like Forensic without the true understanding of human nature. To be evil, human beings need no reason, because the tendency is always buried in between. The motive of a psycho killer needs to be the motive itself, for otherwise, it will only be a case of revenge, like shown in movies like Anjaam Pathiraa, making him just another killer. There is also a little bit of missing with the performances in this movie, and gory elements seem to be added with no reason at all. The movie could have also established it in a better way.

Performers of the soul :: Dawn Van de Schoot plays an interesting character, as a mother in the main role, and defending the family. Still, she doesn’t get that much to do around here. Hailey Foss who plays the daughter gets even less to do, and Kaeleb Zain Gartner gets limited too. Arielle Rombough did seem to have an interesting character in the beginning, but later gets limited to almost nothing. Michael Tan’s character is rather the strangest of them all. An attempt to create something like The Purge in the neighbourhood certainly needed better characters, and all of them needed more to do better. Within an hour and a quarter of time to get things going, focus on the characters was less, and it leads to most of the cast suffering, with not able to get their characters going. A movie like Red Letter Day which got the premise and the idea well and working, should have taken care of the same in a better way to help its cast to work further.

How it finishes :: Red Letter Day is not really the horror movie that you expect. It is supposed to be horror comedy, but there is a good amount of blood and gore in this violent movie, and that should confuse many people about the genre. But this one surely makes an effective experience, and we also get a glimpse into the psyche of people, as they think about killing people without thinking too much about it. The inherent evil and the survival instinct in people begin to work, and there seems to be a certain amount of need to move away from law and order to embrace chaos, which can be seen here. Fear might be a catalyst, but in this movie, we can say that it is not really the same – there is distrust and a certain amount of desire to kill that makes people do this in this particular flick. You can watch this one hour and fifteen minutes movie to get that feel. With its short run-time, Red Letter Day doesn’t bring wonders, and just has enough to keep you interested in the idea.

Release date: 5th November 2019
Running time: 76 minutes
Directed by: Cameron Macgowan
Starring: Hailey Foss, Dawn Van de Schoot, Arielle Rombough, Kaeleb Zain Gartner, Roger LeBlanc, Tiffany Helm, Michael Tan, Peter Strand Rumpel, Ryan Irving, Greg Spielman, Josh Bertwistle, Marni Reisig, Cameron Gerlitz