Editorials
10 Worst Horror Exposition Monologues!!!
Often times, a horror film has to take a moment or two to finally explain what’s been going on the whole movie. These exposition scenes are almost always eye-rollingly long and drawn out.
Not every film can have Richard Dreyfuss show up and offer a just perfect amount of information with a great performance. Sometimes you have to listen to Tony Todd pontificate instead.
Check out some of the worst offenders after the break.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Usually exposition in Halloween films is handled by Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis. But along with basic quality, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers eschewed this convention and gave its big speech on the history of runes and killer children to Paul Rudd who delivers his speech as though he are some kind of autistic robot. The film is less than 90 minutes long, but scenes like this make it feel like a lifetime.
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Nightmare on Elm Street 3, easily stands as the best of the NOES sequels, and in some ways even eclipses the original. But it’s also the film where Freddy’s backstory starts to get unnecessarily complicated. Pretty much any time the movie cuts to either a nun or Craig Wasson (no, that’s not Bill Maher), you know you’re entering exposition Hell.
Sinister
Sinister is a lot of fun, but it’s remarkable how much help Ethan Hawke’s character needs putting the pieces together. For him to finally understand the easily avoidable danger he’s put himself in, he needs help from a goofy deputy and not one but two Skype conversations from local academic Professor Talksalot (played by Vincent D’Onofrio). By the time he has the case cracked, we are all way ahead of him waiting for his drunk ass to finally catch up.
Scream 3
Each entry in the Scream franchise deserves a place in the Blatant Exposition Hall of Fame. Part 3 has to be the worse offender, though, because even after you sit through Roman’s (raise your hand if you remember Roman) whole spiel, you’re still not sure you completely understand what the Hell he was talking about. On top of that, he claims to be retroactively responsible for the whole franchise thus far, which in a way means we can blame Roman for the horrible explosion in all the films.
Saw 2
Like the Scream films, exposition scenes are one of the things that help define the Saw series. Any of the films could have made this list, but I’m going with Part 2 since starting at about the halfway point, we have to hear every character spill their guts about their backstory. Furthermore, with the whole Amanda twist, this is the first movie to really establish the methodology by which Saw would ultimately eat into itself to survive as a franchise.
Shutter Island
By the time we get to the Ben Kinglsey’s massive info dump near the end of Shutter Island, we’ve kind of figured it out for him. A little explanation would be fine, but he just keeps going and going. Pretty soon, he’s referring to anagrams on chalkboards and it’s almost to the point of self-parody.
Jeepers Creepers
A large part of what makes Jeepers Creepers work is the fact that we have no idea what’s going on. That all changes with the introduction of Jezelle Gay Hartman, who tells us basically everything we need to know about the film’s villain in one really long and annoying monologue. After this, the film is remarkably diminished, since The Creeper has now been revealed as a somewhat silly bad guy.
Silent Hill
People are often very down on Silent Hill. Watching it, you spend most of your time wondering why everyone hates it so much. Then the second act exposition fest occurs and you fall asleep. It’s still going on when you wake up, so you fall asleep a second time. When you wake up again, everything is chains and ash and blood and it’s a fun horror film again. But for those three-to-four hours spent explaining Silent Hill‘s backstory, the film is a nightmare, and not the good kind.
John Carpenter’s Vampires
I really like John Carpenter’s Vampires, but the middle section of the film often feels like an extended run of exposition interrupted with occasional Sheryl Lee episodes. We have to learn about the bad guy. We have to learn about all the vampires’ plans. We have to learn about James Woods’ tragic past. And, even though he’s talking to a priest specially trained for vampire work, we have to overhear as James Woods gives his new priest partner the whole spiel all modern vampire movies must give defining which bits of vampire lore adhere to this particular lot of bloodsuckers. Still, it’s worth it. James Woods is one of the more underrated John Carpenter heroes, and it’s always nice to see a film with that much denim.
Identity
I kind of want to give Identity a pass. For one, it’s a pretty fun and original take on the “Ten Little Indians” trope. On top of that, the premise of this film is so wacky, there’s no way anyone could explain it in a timely manner. But that doesn’t mean the big reveal doesn’t drag and dip its toes a bit into the waters of over-explanation. The film’s big twist helps distinguish it from other horror films for sure, but it also makes rewatching it a chore.
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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