Editorials
Celebrate the New Year With ‘Terror Train’!
Happy New Year everyone! I hope all of you have a fantastic holiday and are ready to dive right in to 2015! I’ve been pretty sick all week so I’ve just been watching some horror classics, rather than out partying with the cool kids. This year I thought I would revisit (and pseudo review) an old classic that just happens to be set on New Year’s Eve: Terror Train.
For those of you who don’t know, Terror Train is about a group of fraternity and sorority students who are stalked on a train one New Year’s Eve by a masked figure. They quickly figure out that the only people being killed were involved in a prank played on a fellow student three years earlier. The prank involved making Kenny (the aforementioned shy kid) think he was going to hook up with Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, Alana, only to have a fake(?) corpse be in the bed. Kenny then proceeds to freak out and spin around in circles on the bed before the screen cuts to black.
It’s a pretty simple plot, and the characters would be completely indistinguishable if they weren’t wearing costumes (other than Jamie Lee Curtis and David Copperfield). Most of the male characters are unlikable and all of the females (sans Curtis) come across as bimbos. Terror Train does use the costumes in a pretty cool way in that the killer dons the costume of each of his subsequent victims after he murders them.
It’s been a few years since I’ve watched Terror Train but I completely forgot about how much the first hour is a bit of a snooze. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Terror Train. I think it’s alright, but I think since I saw it after all of the classics (Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.) it just wasn’t as interesting to me. Most of the film consists of watching a college party that you can’t be a part of. Sure there is some drama like Curtis’ beef with resident douchebag Doc, but other than that there’s really not much going on here. I found myself frequently pressing the display button on my remote to see how much time had passed.
The mystery itself isn’t all that engaging either, since we pretty much know from the beginning that it’s Kenny who is murdering everyone. Upon re-watching it this week, I realized how much the last 30 minutes completely redeem everything that came before it. The climax of the film is spectacular. Jamie Lee Curtis’ chase scene through the train is incredibly suspenseful and when she locks herself in the cage (forgive me for not knowing the exact term for this location in a train car) it’s pretty intense.
The absolute best part comes from the reveal that Kenny had disguised himself as the magician’s assistant for the entire film, and was occasionally sneaking off to kill the pranksters in the group. It’s a reveal that come completely out of left field. I wouldn’t be surprised if this twist had inspired the writers of Sleepaway Camp, although they took it a bit further. I admit to being surprised, because it had been so long since I had seen the film. I remember Kenny being the murderer, but that magician’s assistant bit took me completely off guard. It’s hilarious. Then of course you have Kenny’s ridiculous spinning come back into play:
Overall, I’d say Terror Train is a decent entry into the slasher genre, though I can certainly see why Curtis wanted to get out of the genre at this point in her career. It’s certainly not as good as Halloween and The Fog. I do think it’s better than Prom Night, but that’s debatable. You can’t deny they went all out for than ending though.
So yeah, that was how I spent my New Year’s! Did you do something more exciting than I did? Or maybe you like to watch horror movies on New Year’s to celebrate as well. Let me know in the comments below!
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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