TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

What really scared you as a kid? Was it giant monsters, the dark, a scary house across the street? For me, it was always the nontraditionally scary things that spooked me. I couldn't watch Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka because of how badly the ubiquitous Oompa Loompas sang in their monotone, dead-faced way.  There was the donkey transformation in Disney's Pinocchio (that also served as a great anti-smoking ad). I wasn't allowed to watch any horror films, but my peers in daycare and elementary school sure were, and the biggest show/event that they talked about being the most terrifying thing you could ever see was "It." Someone brought in a copy of the VHS, with Tim Curry's bulbous egg dome and blood-red Ben Franklin side-do greeting you in the upper right corner. It is creepy. But watching it about ten years later, on Spike TV, I can sum it up with a one-word review: "campy." Curry has a ball with Pennywise, and you're always waiting for him to po...

What was I complaining about in the last post...horror films? Well, in the middle of October, as Halloween is just around the corner...we still haven't gotten a true horror movie. Crimson Peak comes close, but director Guillermo del Toro has described it more as a Gothic romance, a very accurate description, though many times throughout the film I did find myself squirming and jumping from anticipation or jump cuts...both fairly effective. Something a great director (an Eastwood, a Kubrick, a Spielberg) most have is a particular, identifiable style. In that sense, del Toro is on his way. I've seen his Blade II, Hellboy and Pan's Labryinth , all dripping with his signature macabre and creative style. Hellboy is the most accessible and enjoyable out of those three, while PL is the best in terms of story quality. The man's been attached to so many projects it's hard to keep count: he was so close to directing the Hobbit trilogy (that would've been an interesting ...

Horror's been getting a bad rep nowadays. The only horror movie to top the box office last year (if you don't count Dumb and Dumber To ) was Ouija . With a...um...less than certified score of 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film benefited from having weak competition that Halloween weekend, though it incredulously beat out the excellent Nightcrawler the next week, which was far more superior in creeping you out, trust me, I've unfortunately seen both. But those are the cash-cows studios push these days: cheapo horror flicks that (primarily) teenagers flock to see to get a burst of adrenaline and nervousness (take a college midterm, it has a similar effect and it kills fewer brain cells). They have D-list acting and make as much sense as the people who actually assign power to ouija boards do. So that's why, when the super-low-budget Australian horror flick The Babadook was widely lauded at the '14 Sundance Film Festival, you could imagine my surprise. A horror flick ge...

It's no surprise to anybody that "Paranormal Activity" made nearly $30,000,000 this past weekend.  The shaky cam found footage film series has been destroying box office numbers since 2009.  I'm going to try to dissect this...this bizarre film phenomenon. First, for those unable to recall the hype of "Paranormal Activity," boy that was something else.  People usually only buzz about superhero movies, the Harry Potter series, Twilight, etc.  You know: big movie franchises.  All of a sudden, this tiny movie with a budget of $15,000 comes out freaking people out in theaters.  The famous trailer accompanying it with people's erratic, horrified reactions to the movie, said to scare the pants off you.  I partly think this works psychologically as people went to see "Paranormal Activity" because it was a challenge of nerve:  will I become as scared as these people are?  Will I be more scared? I bet it won't scare me!  I vividly remember ...

While you're sitting in the theater I found myself with a question: Would I watch this movie if Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, wasn't in it?  That's a no.  Radcliffe is making his premiere post-Potter performance, and if it seems like a step-down to what he could be doing, it is.  I don't think it's far off from saying Radcliffe and the rest of the Harry Potter youths are cinema's most powerful players; I saw Emma Watson in "My Week with Marilyn" but it was more of a cameo, and ultimately forgettable.  So would "The Woman in Black" prove to be a decent first wand-less film for Radcliffe? It really depends on how you look at it.  In terms of horror movies, it's one of the better ones I've seen.  The film doesn't rely too heavily on gore like some of the flicks I've seen these days.  The mood is consistently dark and scarier, and you're always waiting on something to pop out at you, maybe a crow flying through a w...