Tag Archives: Netflix

Top 5 Reasons You Should Call in Sick and Binge The Haunting of Hill House

Has fall gotten you down? Did your seasonal depression kicked in the moment department stores rolled out their Christmas decorations? Does the overcast make you feel like the days are all bleeding together? Does the sight of a box of week old Cheeze Its on the nightstand at 1PM look like breakfast in bed? Will daylight savings push you further into the arms of madness? Maybe somebody needs a staycation?

Why no spend your mental health days watching The Haunting of Hill House.

The Haunting of Hill House follows the Crain family through multiple timelines, telling a story in the order of its mysteries. The flashbacks take place in the 90s when they spent a summer trying to flip the house. Early on we learn the father drove off with his children in the middle of the night after their mother died under mysterious circumstances. Now the family is fractured, spread throughout the country, and haunted, some literally.

Here 5 reasons why I think you should cast off your personal responsibilities and watch this show.

It is the Where’s Waldo of Haunted House TV Shows

Much like It Follows, Ghost Watch, and Insidious, The Haunting of Hill House trains viewers to scan the shadows for anything out of the ordinary. After episode one you’ll be searching the cellars for silhouettes, analyzing archways for apparitions, and foraging the foreground for faces. While there are plenty of monstrous manifestations and outright jump scares the Hill House’s eeriest entities are hide in plain sight. Pay close attention to every flashback scene, odds are there’s a ghost just standing right over a character’s shoulder.

Screen Rant put together this handy cheat sheet of each ghost sighting throughout the season. Have it loaded up so you can freak out anyone else you’re watching with.

Episode 6 and the Choreographed Long Takes

Episode 6 consists of 5 straight takes with no edits. The longest being the third, which clocks in at around 17 minutes. I’m a huge fan of choreographed long takes whether it’s the opening of The Player, The X-Files episode Beyond the Sea, or that infamous Dare Devil hallway fight sequence. Hitchcockian long takes ratchet up the tension by making scenes feel like they’re happening in the moment.

Long takes are also a great place for in camera magic tricks. Now you see a ghost. Now you don’t. I’m surprised the technique isn’t utilized in horror more often.

Not only does the effect make the scares more jarring it makes the Crain family’s grief more engaging. It makes each cast member’s performance all the more riveting and gives each sequence the intimacy of a stage play. The production was shut down for 6 weeks so the actors could rehearse these scenes and Goddamn it was worth it.

It is a Magnum Opus from a Budding Horror Director

This show has very little to do with the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name. Yes, there’s a haunted house with a huge spiral staircase, but there are no paranormal investigators. Most of this is an original creation by writer director Mike Flanagan who is known for one of the better Stephen King adaptation’s Gerald’s Game, the surprisingly effective prequel Ouija: Origin of Evil, andHush.

Flanagan also directed one of my personal favorite horror films in recent years: Oculus, the story of cursed mirror with the power to distort reality. The Haunting of Hill House shares many of that movies themes and the Lasser Glass, the haunted mirror, happens to be hanging on the wall of the Hill House.

Effective Character Driven Horror

Horror movies only have so much time to fit their scares in. They tend to front load all the characterization to the first act. The Netflix format allows for tough and touching character moments throughout. By giving every of the Crain family member their own episodes we find ourselves invested in the whole family.

In slasher films the characters are often written as annoying despicable people so that the audience will applause their investable evisceration. Here we don’t want to watch any of the characters to meet their end even when we know it’s coming.

It’s A Ghost Story that Respects Skepticism

I hate ghost stories where rational explanations for hauntings aren’t explored. Conversely I hate it when the reality of the haunting is so ambiguous we’re left wondering if anything supernatural happened at all. My favorite ghost stories find a sweet spot between the irrational and the rational. They explore common causes of hallucinations: sleep paralysis, sleeping deprivation, and mental illness. Then they tease out supernatural explanation.

The monster of the week episodes of The X-Files mastered this formula by making a skeptic part of the show. The Haunting of Hill House has its very own Dana Scully in the form of Steven a horror writer and paranormal investigator. Steven is there to acknowledge our intellect before Hill House can sidestep it.

Closing Thoughts

If you’re an actor looking for monologue material then boy do I have a show for you. The moment this show had me came in episode 1 when Mrs. Walker recounted the car accident that took her husband and the subsequent haunting. That long extended close up felt like a mission statement. The Haunting of Hill House set out to tell an emotional character driven story. Its scares are well staged, but they benefit most from how much we care about the survival of its characters. A lesson we horror writers would do well to remember. Continue reading Top 5 Reasons You Should Call in Sick and Binge The Haunting of Hill House

The Ultimate X-Files Halloween Marathon

No October is complete without a healthy X-Files binging session, but rather than trying to plow through all 11 seasons might I make some recommendations?

S11 E8 Familiar

In 2018 The X-Files went full creepy pasta with one of its darkest episodes to date featuring a kids show icons that bears more than a passing resemblance to Slender Man, a Satanic Tinky-Winky, and the creepiest song on this side of Elm Street. Despite those modern trimmings this episode is classic X-Files. Mulder and Scully investigate a small town murder only to find themselves in the middle of an angry mob fueled by black magic.

S11 E4 The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat

Mulder and Scully meet a man who claims he’s been their partner throughout the entirety of the series and that he’s been erased from their memories by a weaponized version of the Mandela Effect.

This episode asks is reality subjective? Does it bend to the whim of whoever perceives it? Are shadow forces conspiring to alter our collective memories? Are there alternative universes where every possible outcome is happening, or is the Trump administration full of shit about everything?

Great line, “Confuse the Twilight Zone with the Outer Limits? Do you even know me?!”

I’d argue this is the funniest episode of the series. I’ve played the alien ambassador segment near the end of the episode out of context for dozens of my friends. It always gets a laugh.

S10 E3 Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster

Werewolf movies like American Werewolf in Londonfollow a tight formula: person gets bitten, feels emboldened by their newfound animalistic confidence, gives into their instincts, comes close to hurting someone they love, and chooses to go out in a blaze of glory. This episode puts a fresh spin on the formula by asking: What would happen if a cryptozoological creature got bitten by a human? Would it have a sudden compulsion to put on clothes, get a job, and exaggerate about its sex life?

Rhys Darby, the “Swear Wolf” from What We Do in the Shadowsgives another brilliant comedic performance, as does X-Files super fan comedian Kumail Nanjiani.

This episode is a must watch for fans of Charlie Kaufman’s Human Nature, or Kaufman films in general.

S9 E13 Improbable

What better way to memorialize the late great Burt Reynolds than to watch the episode of The X-Files where he played God? Reynolds, as God, tries to lure a serial killer to the light by using numerology to explain the forces that govern the universe. This is one of the better Mulder-less episodes giving the intuitive Agent Reyes a moment to step into the spotlight.

This episode is worth watching for the scene where God explains the heap of compact discs in the trunk of his car. “I love all music, but I prefer the stuff that lasts.”

So classy.

S7 E12 X-Cops

Hot on the heels of The Blair Witch ProjectThe X-Files took a stab at the found footage genre by using the format of network sibling Copsto do it. Mulder and Scully are investigating a monster that preys on mortal terror. They run into a patrol officer with a film crew in the back of his overturned squad car. Soon the agents find themselves giving the public a window into the paranormal.

S6 E15 Arcadia

Mulder and Scully are sent undercover to investigate a disappearance in the scariest place yet: a gated community. Mulder doesn’t take the assignment all the seriously, playing the role of husband with adolescent enthusiasm. “Women get in here and make me a sandwich.”

In the X-Files community there are “shippers” and “non-shippers.” We shippers spent years wanting to see Mulder and Scully in a relationship. Here we’re taught to be careful what we wish for.
“Mulder, whoever taught you how to squeeze a tube of toothpaste? Toilet seat, third warning.”

“Scully, the thrill is gone.”

S5 E12 Bad Blood

When Mulder drives a stake through a suspect’s heart Scully arrives to find the suspect’s fangs are fake. Now the agents have to get their stories straight.

When TV shows last too long they inevitably do an episode exploring the Rashomon effect. Several characters recount the same event from their own slanted perspectives. Usually it’s one of the weaker episodes relying on the same tired formula. Here it’s one of The X-Files strongest.

Scully sees Luke Wilson’s as a tall dark and handsome man of the law. Mulder sees him as a buck toothed hick who says, “Y’all must be the guv’ment people.”

This is one of the funniest episodes of the series and a great initiation episode for people who’ve never seen the show.

S4 E2 Home

A lot of people think NBC’s Hannibal was the most hardcore show on network TV. Hannibal, please.

This episode is of The X-Files is the stuff of legends. Fox refused to air it upon its completion. When it did air (late one Halloween) it was the first episode of the show to be broadcast with a “Viewer Discretion” warning. This hour of television veers into dark, hard R rated, David Fincher territory, featuring: tumor encrusted mutants, death traps, and something under the bed that you’ll have to see to believe. If you’re composing a list of things you can’t believe were shown on network television start here.

S3 E20 Jose Chung from Outer Space

Usually The X-Files took the alien abduction phenomenon of the 90s deadly seriously. Here the series lets loose and makes fun of all the abduction lore clichés.

This is The X-Files at its most meta and self referential: from the stop motion Cyclops in the sputtering UFO, to the chain smoking aliens, to the brilliant send up of regression hypnotherapy’s power to “unlock” memories.

Featuring Charles Nelson Riley as a Kurt Vonnegut-esque satirist and Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek as men in black.

S3 E4 Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose (or just Clyde Bruckmanon streaming)

Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate the murders of a string of psychic mediums. The agents find themselves disposed by the local authorities when Mulder runs afoul of a TV Psychic the locals have called on for help. Mulder happens upon his own psychic, a man who came to his abilities obsessing over the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. To make things stranger it turns out the killer may be a medium himself. It’s psychic against psychic in the final mind bending confrontation.

Honorable Mentions:

S6 E14 Monday

It’sGroundhog’s Day with Mulder and Scully and a bank robbery.

S6 E2 Drive

When Break Bad series creator Vince Gilligan told AMC he wanted Bryan Cranston for the role of Walter White the network was hesitant. At the time Cranston was known as the quirky father from Malcolm in the Middle. Gilligan used this episode of The X-Files to change AMC’s mind. In it Cranston plays a desperate man who forces Mulder to drive him at a constant speed for fear that something in his head will explode.

S2 E4 Die Hand Die Verlezt

The X-Files has done several episodes exploring the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, but this is the episode where the show went all in. It has everything: a summoning ritual in the woods, repressed memories of cult activity, and a Satanic teachers association.

S5 E5 The Post-Modern Prometheus

Mulder and Scully wander into the plot of a 50s B-movie, complete with a dramatic lightning, a mad scientist, and a Cher impersonator.

S6 E6 How the Ghosts Stole Christmas

It’s Mulder and Scully versus pop psychology when ghosts try to convince them to kill themselves on Christmas Eve.

S2 E20 Humbug

The agents investigate a series of murders in a traveling freak show. This episode is notable for appearances by Jim Rose, the Enigma, and Michael J. Anderson from Twin Peaks and Carnivàle.

S4 E7 Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man

“Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap perfunctory gift that no one ever asked for.”

The X-Files puts a dark spin on Forrest Gump by inserting the Cigarette-Smoking man into a series of historical assassinations.

S2 E24 Our Town

The agents investigate a meat processing plant with a secret ingredient that certainly isn’t love.

S5 E10 Chinga

When Stephen King writes for The X-Files you better believed he’s going to tell a story about a cursed doll. “Time to play!” Continue reading The Ultimate X-Files Halloween Marathon

The Best X-Files Episodes to Capture the Halloween Spirit

(This list has been UPDATED for 2018 here)

Halloween is just around the corner and high def episodes of The X-Files just hit Netflix making now the perfect time for a marathon viewing season, especially since the series is coming back on January 24, 2016.

There’s only one problem: there’s 9 seasons to sift through, with UFO mythology installments, monster of the week moments, and supernatural episodes. Which ones are right for the perfect October evening?

Here’s a curated list from an X-Files super fan, complete with promo spots, to get you in the mood for Halloween. Continue reading The Best X-Files Episodes to Capture the Halloween Spirit

The Best New Horror Comedies for the Halloween Season

This Halloween I have some new inductees into the halls of horror comedy to be placed films next to Shawn of the Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Cabin in the Woods.

Submitted for your approval: a list a of horror comedies that will that will tickle your funny bone before breaking it in half. Continue reading The Best New Horror Comedies for the Halloween Season

The Best New Scary Movies for the Halloween Season

This Halloween keep the classic horror flicks in their crypt. Leave Reagan locked in the room with The Exorcist. Leave that Psycho up in the Bates Motel, and leave Rosemary’s Baby in his crib. This year give some fresh freaks a chance to freak you out.

Submitted for your approval: a list a of horror options worth taking a chance on. Some of these films will get under your skin and make it crawl, while others will pull your heartstrings right out of your chest. Continue reading The Best New Scary Movies for the Halloween Season