Wolf Creek

Hi All,
On to another topic. We had also rented 'Wolf Creek' over the weekend. This film was very loosely based on real-life serial killer Ivan Milat. It was set in Australia, and the director spent the first fifty minutes of the film showing us beautiful landscapes and happy tourists. The creepy part starts when three travellers have their car to break down and a 'friendly' stranger arrives to help them. They let him tow them to a camp site, and sleep for the night. When one of the girls is shown waking up, tied up and in an old room in an abandoned mill, you know how this is going to end. The good news was, the real-life story was much worse than what they showed in this film. I like to know the backstory to these films, if they are based on anything real. But reading about Milat was disturbing. This film was compared to 'Hostel' quite a bit on the imdb.com message boards; why I'm not quite sure. It was more like a lesser version of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' and was tame compared to 'Hostel.' I think my mood was off when I saw 'Hostel,' which was really just an over-the-top, generic slasher film. I've said before that the psychological stuff is what gets to me the most.
It's true: The very idea behind 'Hostel' is what bothered me worse than the film itself. The idea was that people would pay a lot of money to be able to personally torture and kill someone else, preferably American tourists. When one of the 'clients' is telling our hero (who has managed to get out of his torture cell and put on an overcoat so that he looks like a client) how much fun it will be to slice up some innocent young girl, your stomach does kind of turn. It's just a movie, and was not actually based on a real story, but the sad thing is, there are sick people like this out there. Damn it! See? I am still talking about it.
I'm still talking about the 'Will and Grace' finale, too. (haha; I am! I told Bean last night that I thought of still another reason the ending was just WRONG: The four of them were friends! Jack and Will were close, so were Karen and Grace. No way all four would just go their seperate ways!)
But anyway, 'Wolf Creek' was okay. Nothing spectacular but nothing disturbing either. Which was good; I don't like to be distrubed by a movie; I like to be genuinely SCARED. Which brings me back to my favorite horror films, the ones that messed with my mind, or genuinely scared me, but did not sicken me:
The Shining
The Sixth Sense
Ghost Ship
Nightmare on Elm Street
Halloween
Children of the Corn
The Amityville Horror
The Birds
The Others
The Ring
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Scream
Darkness
Boogeyman
House of Wax
The Fog

There are more, I'm sure. Notice I did not put 'The Exorcist' on my list, because that movie was Fake and Not Scary in the least to me. But I know most consider it to be the best horror movie ever. Not I!

And oh yeah, we went to see 'Mission:Impossible III' yesterday. It was okay. It was like a lesser version of any episode of 'Alias,' substituting Tom Cruise for Jennifer Garner. Except we care a lot more for Garner's Sydney Bristow than we do for Cruise's Ethan Hunt. Bad public personas aside, the character of Ethan Hunt just wasn't that well developed and we really didn't care about any of the people in this film. I love J.J. Abrams, the director, but this was generic action, and that's about it. Bean also saw 'Poseidon' and said the same about it. No characters to care about. Even 'Wolf Creek' managed to make you care about the characters and whether they lived or died. Looks like Big Summer Movie Hollywood needs to re-evaluate itself.

Horror/Scary Movies I'd like to see
1) Anything about the Salem Witch Trials, except make the women REAL witches.
2) A haunted hotel. You can never have too many of those.
3) Something dealing with England's White Tower.
4) The story of The Flying Dutchman
5) Anything set in a haunted castle. Castles are the creepiest things!

Hmm. Looks like I'll have to get to writing those myself.....

Have a great day!