Contributing Writer
Jared Hill
The Jamestown Gazette is pleased to bring our readers insightful and informative reviews of some of the nation’s most popular, current films. Jared Hill’s past commentary and reviews will be archived at Jamestown Gazette’s website, www.jamestowngazette.com.
The Babadook
Director: Jennifer Kent
Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman
The Babadook, has brought the manifestation of the Boogie Man to its truest, darkest and most original form. What certainly makes it most scary is that he comes in the form of a children’s book. It is a pop-up book telling of “The Babadook.” He knocks three times; “Dook, dook, dook,” and with graphic detail and foreshadowing presents an unsettling violence bubbling underneath the surface between a widow and her young son. The monster cannot be defeated by magic or higher deities. The mother alone must confront him face-to-face; an evil entity deemed un-faceable.
Rating: 3/4
The Corpse Bride
Director: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ulman
Halloween along with the autumn season brings a gothic beauty to the night known as “The day of the dead”. In that peculiar, supernatural beauty a romance looms in the air, exemplified in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. In his cold world made of cobblestones, crows and corpses; the land of the living is as grey as life itself, and the underworld is lush in color, with an atmosphere equivalent to the Kit-Kat Club of Cabaret. Victor, the pale groom, wanders into the woods to learn his sacred vows; he accidently becomes entangled between the two worlds. He weds a new bride. However, his heart belongs to another. Can a heart no longer beating still manage to become broken?
Rating: 3/4
2001: A Space Odyssey
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Raina
The existentialism and the foretold destiny of mankind alone qualify Kubrick’s Space Odyssey as a horror in its own right. Today we’re surrounded by as much technology and as many questions facing the astronauts aboard the Discovery One in 1968. Before all of the Siris and the Cortanas there was the HAL-9000, a computer who’s intellectual capabilities could not be measured nor understood by the minds who created it. A space voyage to Jupiter provides an awe-striking setting, as well as suspense unparalleled by any film. In 2015, the surrealism of the film has merged with reality perhaps more than we know, or could ever understand. The scariest films leave you with more questions than answers.
Rating: 4/4
