Halloween Team 2018: The Gunning Picks

For four years now the Gunnings, Mikols and Jacoby-Murphys have been taking turns picking Halloween movies.  I covered our first batch for 2018 in my last post.  Here are some more.

Next up was Hilary's turn.  This year she chose Ghost Stories with Martin Freeman.  It was basically a series of vignettes following a man trying to debunk ghost stories that convinced other skeptics.  The real success of this movie, was the buildup.  In each section, the main characters would move through a series of escalating events with plenty of time in between each jump.  It was the anticipation that really amped up the scares.  Up through the penultimate theme we were feeling like this was the scariest movie we'd watched.   And I think in some ways that is true.  BUT.  The ending really knocked the legs out from under it.  I don't know where I wanted the story to go, but I think the end retroactively made even earlier good parts a little less good.  Still, worth the watch and a very good pick.

I give it 80% of the movie 4 faulty flashlights, with the final bit getting 1 goat man.

Now... our next pick. I don't think it's really important to say who chose it. That's not even the point.  It's a mistake anyone could make. I don't think the selector should be held accountable. Anyway, at the appointed time we gathered and began the mid-90s horror, comedy, drama, thriller  movie Wolf starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader (for some reason).  I guess if I have to give one compliment, it is pretty impressive that the team behind Wolf manged to get such wooden, confusing performances out of Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader (for some reason.)  I would expect more from any of those people and was actually pretty excited to see Nicholson and Pfeiffer together. Look, this movie sucked. It was the worst.  Let me see if I can stitch together the plot.  Spader is gunning for Nicholson's job as managing editor of... something.  A publishing house?  Michelle Pfeiffer is the sullen daughter of the new owner of the publishing house (?).  For some reason she likes Nicholson.  For some reason Spader likes Nicholson's wife.  Oh and also, several people are werewolves.  I give up. This is more like a super hero movie for middle aged people, and an unsuccessful one at that.  There are no silver linings here and I'm too bored to make some sort of silver bullet joke. Whoever picked it would like to apologize to the group.

I give this 1 full moon.