The Silence of the Lambs (1992)

The Silence of the Lambs is a film that I have only seen once before and to be honest I was slightly underwhelmed by it. I thought it was ok but was hoping to get a different reaction seeing it on the big screen after six hours in a cinema and it being half three in the morning, the film was struggling to improve. The set up of the film is that FBI Academy student Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is tasked with interviewing Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to try and get information regarding a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill.

The first encounter between Clarice and Lecter is really well done and comes surprisingly early in the film. I think if this were made today then they would have waited 40 minutes or so to build up the scene but by having it in the first few minutes means that we are thrown off guard with the encounter. I thought that Jodie Foster does a very good job of making Clarice confident yet slightly insecure given that she is thrown into this situation with no experience or warning. Anthony Hopkins gives one of his best performances in this film. There is something slightly unnerving about the fact that he never raises his voice. It’s not monotone but it never seems to go up in pitch. I would have liked more scenes with them together. Even at the end when they are talking on the phone they seem to have a great dynamic together and just made me wish we had gotten more from them.

Given that Lecter is synonymous with the movie, it is somewhat surprising that he basically disappears for the last third of the movie. This is perhaps a plot necessity so that they can tie up the important subplot of getting Buffalo Bill. The character of Buffalo Bill wasn't really given as much screen time as he perhaps should have been and I don't think that Ted Levine was the right choice for Gumb. He doesn't come across as psychotic enough and its hard to believe him to be this scary menace.

I still like The Silence of the Lambs but I don't love it. I think that it has some great central performances but I think the pacing is a little slow and I don't think you can blame the fact it was an early 90’s film. I think that at two hours the film slightly outstays its welcome and could probably have lost 15-20 minutes. I can see why people might rate it quite highly as a horror and there are good moments in it but it just didn't connect with me in the way that I thought it would and it didn't have anything to do with the fact it was quarter past five in the morning when it finished. This is the second time that I have seen this film and feel the same overall. Not sure if its one that I will be watching a third time but time will tell I suppose. 

The Thing (1982)

The Thing was the highlight of my movie marathon (having already seen The Shining in the cinema a couple of months ago). The Thing is one of those films that I avoided growing up cause my tolerance of gore was quite low in the early 90’s when I would have watched this. Thankfully I put this right and was glad to be able to see it on the big screen. I think this might actually be John Carpenter’s best film although there are other films that deserve to be involved in that particular discussion.

The special effects are glorious and show why practical effects will always be better than CGI (something the 2011 version should have realised). They look really good on my TV at home but on the big screen you can appreciate the effort that went into them. They all look disgusting and are just as effective today as they did in 1982. There is one stop motion shot which doesn't quite work towards the end but apart from that the effects that Stan Winston created here are some of the best ever.There is one matte painting shot which is designed to show the where the spaceship was buried and it does look like a matte painting on the big screen but that is one of the few dated things that is in the movie.

One of the things that I love about this film is the isolated setting. I always like isolated settings because they mean that the cavalry isn't going to come over the nearest horizon or help our main characters out. The characters have to use their heads to try and get them out of the situation and the way that the characters are written means that you can see them working together even if they are at odds some of the time. I do think that there are too many characters for too much of the film so it means that we have to put up with some characters that don't really connect with me. The only ones that do are MacReady, Blair & Childs and that is because they are played by Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley & Keith David. To be fair, they are really good as Kurt Russell is at the peak of his career and the thing to like about MacReady is he doesn't start off as the tough guy but is sort of forced into it by the actions of the film. Wilford Brimley is distracting at first by not having a moustache.

I like the fact that we don't know for a long period of time who the ‘thing’ is. The shadow doesn't look like any of the cat so there is no way of knowing until the big reveal. The Thing is not in any rush to show itself and that is another thing that the 2011 version fails to understand. You don't have to have everything spoonfed to you and apart from the opening shot, we don't know anything about what the Thing is and how it got here. 

The Ennio Morricone credited score sounds an awful lot like a John Carpenter score and that is probably because it is. Carpenter views his score like wallpaper which is a bit dismissive but in the context of this film and a lot of films around this period, that attitude works to the film's benefit. There is something alien sounding about the score and when there is an alien hiding in plain sight it does what a score should do and that is compliment what is going on.

I have always thought that this film was very good but seeing it on the screen has made me appreciate it even more. The story is simple, the setting is perfect, the way that suspense is used is brilliant and the gore/horror is some of the best of this era. I have changed my rating which isn't something I tend to do with films that I have seen before. This is a five start film in my opinion and one of the best horror films of all time. 

The Omen (1976)

The Omen is the first part of a four part movie marathon which starts at nine at night and ends around eight hours later in the early hours of Sunday morning. The 1976 Omen is arguably the best and starts at 6am on June 6 and sees Gregory Peck star as Robert Thorn who is the US Ambassador and his pregnant wife gives birth but sadly the baby dies. Thorn is given the choice of taking a baby who has just been born but has lost his mother and taking him as his new child but without telling his wife Katherine (Lee Remick).

Gregory Peck is very good as Robert. His world slowly starts to crumble and he seems to accept what is happening but with an understandable amount of scepticism. The only time this scepticism becomes an issue is when he is told to kill Damian and Robert goes back to seeing Damian as a child.Lee Remick does ok as Katherine although her role is somewhat limited and the only time she really gets anything to do is when Katherine jumps out of a window and into a neatly placed ambulance. It is always harsh to criticise child actors as especially now they are quite good but back in the 1970’s that wasn't the case and Harvey Stephens does ok as Damian. He does a good job of looking like a normal young boy which plays into the ideal of him being the son of the devil even harder to believe.

I have never felt this before but the whole part of the film where Robert and Keith go to Italy and visit the graveyard is actually my favourite part of the entire film. It’s done with a great sense of atmosphere and it is the part of the film where we really get some development in the story and crucially some answers to what is going on. It takes place at night but we can still see what is going on which is the main issue with a lot of horror films today.

Being a Doctor Who fan, the inclusion of Patrick Troughton is a main reason why I will always rewatch the show. It is only three years since his last appearance as the Doctor and this might be a dumb thing to say but as Father Brown it is very different to the Cosmic Hobo that he played in Doctor Who. His run is also very different and shows that his run in Doctor Who was a stylistic choice instead of how he normally runs or it could have been a stylistic choice in this film. His role in the film is important because he is trying to convince Robert of the danger that is about to come over his family. He is obviously dismissed by Robert but it leads to his death which is a really good one because it seems to come out of nowhere. David Warner is another person with Doctor Who connections having starred in several audio adventures right up until his death. In this he is very good as Keith. Saying Warner is good in something is an obvious thing to say but he brings something great to whatever role he is in and seems to have better luck in making Robert understand the severity of the situation. His importance to Robert inevitably leads to his death and its a very good death like Father Brown. He loses his due to a freak accident and whilst the prop head does look like a prop head, his death is still shocking.

Given that Damian isn't in it as much as you would expect, it's a credit to the film that his importance to the plot comes across as effective as it does. It’s only at the end when Robert takes Damian to the church with the intention of killing him that the scale of what could happen is really understood.

The writing and directing were very good. It always amuses me that the director of this would go onto direct The Goonies which is one of my favourite films and is tonally very different to this film. I like this film but have to admit that I don't love it. I think that there are moments which are very well done but there is something that doesn't quite work for me. I have watched it many times over the years and with each watch I hope that something stands out to me but each time I find myself feeling the same. It’s not bad by any means but it doesn't work for me in the same way that it works for others. It is still the best of the series even though it works as a good double bill with The First Omen.

Backrooms (2026)

I was genuinely looking forward to this film more than Mandalorian and Grogu. The trailer had a lot of mystery without spoiling too much so was the perfect type of trailer. The film is based on a web series that started on creepypasta and this got picked up by A24. Now I have never seen the YouTube stuff that he did but this film is a continuation of that stuff but I dont feel like i was missing out on not having seen it. There will obviously have been Easter eggs in the film but I never felt like I was missing out but if you have seen the other stuff then you will get the references.

I thought that when Mary is pulled away by the people in the hazmat suits and it fades to black that the film was over would have been a terrible ending but then thankfully it continues but then worried again that we were going to be bombarded with exposition but thankfully we weren’t and what we ended up getting was a satisfying ending that l thought was mysterious but still gave us enough information. The explanation is that a company that started to do work in MRI stopped all that so that they could research this area that seems to go on and on forever. 

The film doesn't have many performances but that two central ones are Chiwetel Ejiofor who plays Clark and Renate Reinsve who plays Mary the psychiatrist. I liked Reinsve in Sentimental Value which was Oscar nominated this year and both of them play flawed people. Clark runs a furniture store that is failing (never see a customer) and his marriage is falling apart and he lives in the store and once Mary finds him, he decides to stay because its where he feels at home and can sort of wallow in his misery. Mary has her own issues, she seems to have a good life by being a psychiatrist but we see that she has a book for sale and we see her eating her dinner on the couch and she had a mother who seemed to have a mental illness. The film ends with her seemingly trapped in this world but it is left ambiguous. Ejiofor is very good as someone who can’t get past the fact things have happened to him and he can’t accept that he is responsible. The scene where Clark is at the dinner table with Mary, the bearded guy and the woman in the red office dress and he grabs chunks of white something and puts it on the plates and it was at this point that the focus shifted to Mary as she is trying to escape from the 8ft Pirate Clark. They dont spend a huge amount of time together so it’s hard to really rate their chemistry but on their own they were both very good.

There is a great sense of claustrophobia when they move into the Backrooms. There were a couple of moments which genuinely did make me jump and this was a rare case of jumpscares actually working because they weren’t earnt so I didn’t mind. The fact that it is brightly lit shows that you can light rooms and things can still be unnerving or scary. The 8ft Pirate Clark looked creepy even when we got to see it which is not what I was expecting but again shows that you can make this stuff work when you reveal things.  

I do think that we are in a strong period for horror films. There is this, there was Obsession, Iron Lung, Exit 8 and this is another film that is made by a YouTuber and it’s shocking and quite frankly soul destroying to know that Kane Parsons is 20 YEARS OLD!!!! This film did have involvement from the likes of James Wan and Osgood Perkins so hopefully they had a positive impact on him and this is the start of a very promising career. Very good stuff.