Thursday Movie Picks (Halloween Edition): New Home

 

For the 41st week of 2022 as part of Wandering Through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks as it’s Halloween season. We go into the subject of a new home where people buy a new house thinking it’s going to be a new start when the reality is that it’s a fucking nightmare. Here are my three picks as these are films that are… well…. Not good at all:

1. Thir13en Ghosts

This was pretty lame despite a promising premise in which a man inherits a home from his uncle that he and his two kids can live unaware that it is a haunted mansion with ghosts living there. It had some gory elements and such but the end results of it is pretty stupid. The look of the ghosts are cool but it often plays into cheap scares and some cheesy kills as one would think that having a film with Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Rah Digga, Shannon Elizabeth (who is briefly topless), and F. Murray Abraham would work but no. It was shit.

2. The Messengers

Starring pre-fame/pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart as a troubled teen who moves to a farm with her family in an attempt to deal with various issues and such from within seems like an interesting idea. Yet, it ends up being a generic film that has an extremely messy climax involving ghosts and other horrible shit. This was definitely not a fun film to watch at all. I feel bad for Stewart in this who was already becoming a promising actress then and is now one of the best working today. Yet, every actor has a stinker or two in them.

3. Dream House

One would expect that a horror film directed by Jim Sheridan starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts to be a winner but that is not what happened with Sheridan, Craig, and Weisz not only disowning the film but never bothered to promote it. Seeing the results, it’s no wonder they disowned it as it’s about a writer who moves into a new home with his wife and kids unaware that something isn’t right as it involved the death of a family inside the home. This is where things get fucked up as there’s a twist involved that makes the whole thing stupid as the film’s production was highly troubled due to clashes between Sheridan and one of its producers in James G. Robinson as the latter ended up re-cutting the whole film without Sheridan’s involvement who chose not to be involved and tried to get his name out of the film. I don’t blame Sheridan for this as no one involved should say anything good about it.

©thevoid99 2022