Sara Watches Stuff

I know I've mentioned before my personal affinity for Big Fucked Up Family Movies, but I hate how often they neglect the exploration of the actual family dynamics and instead try to pile shock on shock. It's very much Alexandre Aja's modus operandi - he directed this remake along with 2003's  High Tension  - as he seems to thrive on creating movies that push the limits of "too far", but does so with choices that are often hard to track. As a big horror fan, I like to see people in movies get confronted with impossible situations. I want characters' limits tested. Aja's take on Wes Craven's 1977 movie follows the same story, where a family traveling through the desert find themselves stranded and under attack from a family of (sigh) mutant cannibals. I haven't seen Craven's movie, though it is generally agreed that the remake is superior; my issues with this movie come more from the carnival of horrors way the antagonists are deployed, not...

I decided to finally watch this movie, the trailer of which gave me nightmares when I was in year six because I was a baby (come on - the whole “have you checked the children?” thing put me on edge when babysitting for years).  It’s an adaptation of the film of the same name from 1979, where a girl is babysitting and starts getting calls from the titular stranger, and things get more threatening from there. This movie is like a straight up time capsule to the early-mid 2000s and my entire childhood: there are boot cut jeans and Motorola flip phones and getting in trouble for going over your minutes. It's only been a bit over ten years and already it feels uncomfortably dated. Already bracing my face for cringing, it didn’t help that the acting was similarly grating - atrocious at times, at best it is bearable. The plot plods along pretty predictably, and I remember the big twist being spoiled by the trailer of the time (the big wham line was one I actually remembered as soon as ...