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Michael Walters

Film posts

Join me for my 2025 #ArthouseSummer as I watch “arthouse” films until the end of August.

I've posted reviews of films off and on for years, but it only became regular when I attempted the 2020 #31DaysofHorror film challenge. I discovered I loved having a structure around watching films, and making myself write a few paragraphs embedded the film a little more in my brain. That led to watching the films of David Lynch in chronological order in 2021, and then Dario Argento in 2024.

I find it hard to choose what to watch these days because almost everything is available at any point in time. A film challenge is a form of curation. It helps me start and provides guide ropes as I go. I still like to post a review when I fancy though.

Sunbathing actors look at the camera.

October 05 2023, 06:05

Eye in the Labyrinth (1972)

Julie is looking for her missing psychiatrist (hard relate) and travels to a Greek island to search for him. There she stays at a clifftop villa with a commune of shifty artists.
A woman nervously walks around a deserted photography studio.

October 04 2023, 06:04

Strip Nude For Your Killer (1975)

Sometimes the algorithm wears you down, and the familiar cover art catches you in a vulnerable moment, and you choose a film that you know will be bad... except it’s good!
An older man looks at himself drinking a glass of whiskey in the mirror

October 03 2023, 06:03

The Broken (2007)

A mirror falls off a wall during a party, releasing cold-hearted döppelgangers from a mirror world who begin to replace their counterparts.
A line of men on horseback holding torches along the horizon of a field.

October 02 2023, 06:02

The Cursed (2021)

Kelly Reilly plays another mother, this time on a remote estate in nineteenth-century rural England, and is visited by a ‘pathologist’ instead of Poirot. A curse is made, werewolves ensue.
Venice from the air.

October 01 2023, 06:01

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

I started this year’s #31DaysofHorror with a classic whodunnit mashed with a ghost story. Kenneth Branagh plays around with spooky children, Viennese masks and fish eye lenses to fun effect.
Poster for Meg 2:  The Trench

August 07 2023, 19:41

Meg 2: The Trench

Teeth and tentacles chomp, devour, squeeze and rip through submarines, boats, research stations, and eventually a holiday resort. People die. Lots of people having fun die.

October 31 2021, 18:28

In the Earth (2021)

A fascinating, horrible, blackly funny film about Covid, nature, group dynamics, and how humans exist in relation to other forms of life.

October 30 2021, 19:47

Ghostbusters II (1989)

To finish my parade of eighties sequels, I went with this, which I can remember seeing in the cinema at a birthday party. The chemistry isn’t the same, and Bill Murray is... unpleasant.

October 29 2021, 06:33

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Five years after the killings of Crystal Lake, a new camp has been created, and a killer again picks off the counsellors one by one.

October 28 2021, 08:16

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Ten years after the Haddonfield killings, Michael Myers escapes, forcing Loomis to return and protect Laurie Strode’s daughter, Jamie.

October 27 2021, 06:13

Halloween II (1981)

When Michael Myers’ body goes missing, Dr Loomis continues his search on the streets of Haddonfield, while Laurie is taken to hospital and sedated.

October 26 2021, 06:01

Planet Terror (2007)

An accidentally released biochemical weapon turns soldiers into a pack of marauding flesh-eating mutants. Soon the local population swamp the hospital creating a relentless circus of cheesy dialogue and amusingly extreme violence.

October 25 2021, 06:03

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1987)

Clowns on screen have never frightened me, not even Pennywise, although on the page he was a different proposition. This film isn’t trying to scare you.

October 24 2021, 05:30

Scream 4 (2011)

Sydney returns to Woodsboro on the fifteenth anniversary of the original killings to promote her new bookbut her niece, Jill, is in the High School, which presents another Ghostface with new victims.

October 23 2021, 06:20

Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)

Gonzo decides to miss his friends Halloween party to take up an invitation by The Great MacGuffin, his favourite magician, to stay a night at the most haunted mansion in the world.

October 22 2021, 05:30

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

An abusive husband has writer’s block. When a killer murders a woman he has agreed to meet, and then others are found dead, he forces his wife to help him.

October 21 2021, 05:58

Censor (2021)

Enid Baines is a censor at the British Board of Film Classification. Her parents decide it is time to have her long-missing sister declared dead. Enid’s daily life, the films she has to watch, and memories of her sister, begin to bleed together.

October 20 2021, 06:17

La Llorona (2019)

A former general found guilty of genocide is trapped in his house by protesters, and strange things begin to happen to the family as the ghosts of the past insist on being heard.

October 19 2021, 05:50

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Ana, a nurse, wakes up to the start of a zombie apocalypse, and manages to hook up with a police officer, Rhodes, and three other survivors and hide in a nearby shopping mall.

October 18 2021, 05:47

Night of the Demons (1988)

A disparate group of misfits are tormented by a demon after a seance-like party game on Halloween night. The second half of this film rips.

October 17 2021, 06:50

Saw (2004)

Two men wake up chained by the ankles to radiators on opposite sides of a locked room. There is a dead man between them with his brains blown out, clutching a tape recorder.

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