And welcome to the final part of our wrap up! If you haven’t read them yet, you should start with
Part 1 and
Part 2.
TWISTS
Mikey: So in addition to a lack of teenagers chopped to bits, another big thing we missed this month was twists! I tagged two of our movies with the “Twist” tag: The Canal and The Uninvited (and I thought I was being generous with The Canal). My favorite thing in all of movie-dom is a huge plot twist that completely redefines everything you’ve seen beforehand. Did M. Night Shyamalan spoil me for twists just like I am spoiled for scares, or did we really see a lot of straightforward narratives? (Honorable mention: there were some twists in Holidays between all the various stories)
Solee: I feel like we saw a lot of very uninspiring plots this month. There were very few surprises and I pretty much knew how things would turn out based on the IMDB description most of the time.
Mikey: We did have that group of movies that were very surprising we mentioned before, but they weren’t “twists” where everything changes, just unexpected events along the way to an expected conclusion. I really appreciated those, but I do miss having my mind blown apart.
Solee: I think we’re more likely to get that mind-blowing twist from movies that are labeled “thriller” than from “horror” these days, especially since anything that strays from the standard “horror” fare gets panned by the critics.
Mikey: You’re right about that. Psychological Thriller November? Maybe later when we’ve had time to recover from this month of not getting anything real done.
Just to wrap up with a few random notes from the tags I made:
- We saw 5 movies that took place during Christmas time. Popular for horror, I guess!
- No fewer than 11 movies earned my “Driven” tag, which means they featured people being driven insane by ghosts. Very common idea.
- We saw 7 movies which earned the Cheese tag.
- Only 5 of our movies got a Gore tag, but I was pretty picky about that - they had to really focus on gore, not just have one really bloody thing.
- 5 serial killers, 7 demons, 12 ghosts, 3 cults, 2 “monsters” (the Behemoth and the Shadow Puppets monster), only 2 zombies, and just one witch.
- Only 4 found footage movies! Sad.
- Four comedies (or attempted comedies).
- Four Sci-Fi movies.
- Surprisingly only 3 movies which featured a pregnant woman. Seems like I flipped past a hundred of those while searching for movies.
- Even more surprising that we got two first-person view movies! The first two I’ve ever seen.
- Four foreign movies: Irish, Spanish, Israeli, and British.
- Only 3 movies earned the coveted Insane tag for being totally insane.
- Unsurprisingly, only one courtroom drama!
Solee: To be accurate, there were only three movies with pregnant women, but one of those movies was Holidays, which had several different pregnancy related stories.
Mikey: Yes, well we also had a lot more than 2 zombies, but I’m just counting up how many movies featured them!
Solee: I have two questions before we bring this monster discussion to a close. First, do you think you chose different movies because I was participating with you?
Mikey: I think there was an influence. One thing I didn’t do was spend the entire afternoon flipping through movies to find just the perfect one, because that drives you insane!
Solee: Wait. You DIDN’T do that???
Mikey: It’s so much worse when you’re not looking. I think I also semi-consciously tried to find “good” movies (which worked!). On my own, I would plow through a lot more found footage garbage.
Solee: And weird mutant creature combinations?
Mikey: Nah, I don’t really go for those in the marathon (at least not in large numbers). That’s more for watching with my sister! Oh, I also avoided foreign movies more because subtitles can be difficult when somebody is half-blind from laser beams.
Solee: I am honestly disappointed by how much this stupid eye thing affected our movie watching. I would have enjoyed more foreign films. Next year!
Mikey: The gears are already turning...
ARTWORK
Solee: And my last question: What did you think of my drawings? Favorite? Least favorite?
Mikey: Oh the drawings!! My favorite thing about this month was having somebody else be the one spending all this time on arts and crafts instead of me! The drawings were awesome. Let’s see…
- Best Picture 2016: Kill List, i-Lived, and The Pact
- Oh there’s so many others… Amityville, Sympathy (yes, the doodle), The Invitation
- Anyway, on to my least favorite even though I surely loved them all with all my heart: I think The Final Girls. It’s an ugly house regardless of how you draw it. It even looked weird in the movie!
Solee: Yes. I think that
Final Girls was one of the first ones post-surgery. My heart definitely wasn’t in it.
Ouija and
Beacon 77 are pretty bad. And
The Witch was a total cop-out. I’m disappointed that I went that the tracing route, even once.
Mikey: The Witch would be super impressive if I didn’t know you cheated. It’s a good way to learn, though!
Solee: I was quite proud of the wine glass from The Invitation because I traced it first and then drew it all over again on my own. Learning!
Mikey: Honorable mentions to [REC*] because of how fun it is and how much you hate it.
Solee: I do hate those stick figures. I think my overall favorite was the shotgun from i-LIVED. That turned out WAY better than I expected.
Mikey: That’s why it won Best Picture! So… anything else we need to know about this awesome month of awesome movies? And terrible ones?
Solee: I think that pretty much wraps it up. And it only took us… 2.5 hours and 11 pages! Special props to anyone who managed to read to this point.
Mikey: I don’t even care if anybody reads it, this was just all fun for me. I had the best time.
Solee: Ditto. Now… let’s have lunch. And maybe watch Cabin in the Woods because it’s the BEST Halloween movie ever! (Yes, it’s actually Oct 31 as we’re writing this…)
Mikey: It is Halloween tradition! I hope no kids show up so I can eat all the candy we got.
Solee: Except the mini Butterfingers. Those are mine.
Mikey: All the time (see I rhymed, right?).
Solee: Better than a leprechaun!
