The second in this year’s #31DaysOfHorror is a tight little haunted house flick called “We Are Still Here.” Clocks in at less than 90 minutes, chock full of spooky stuff, beautiful ambiance, and gore, and without any of those pesky existential questions that plagued the previous entry.
I really dug this movie. It’s set in what’s supposed to be a fairly bleak midwestern winter landscape.
These are pretty long shots. I love, love, love that this movie takes its time and still manages to have such a tidy clock-in time. These shots are beautiful, too– all swirling snow, overcast skies, rural pastoral landscapes.
I believe we’re supposed to take a sense of loneliness, and isolation, and sort of creeping dread from all of these.
The only problem here is that I really like snowy midwestern scenes. I miss the midwest. I miss snow. This screams comfort and nostalgia to me.
That’s why I’m front-loading this with so many stills. This shit is beautiful.
Anyway, the movie is about a couple who move to a house in the rural midwest only to discover that all is not as it seems. This is something that might actually be harmed by spoilers, so you might want to stop here, if you don’t want to get a general gist of the movie and see some animated gifs of exploding heads and the like.
The thing that I love about this movie is that it never seems rushed or hurried. There aren’t very many jumpcuts, very few jump-scares. The camera’s not afraid to linger. This movie takes more than a few of its cues from the Italian horror flicks of the 70s, which I personally love. The director is clearly infatuated with Lucio Fulci (as am I; tomorrow’s (Or Monday’s) entry will talk a bit more about that).
Man, I love these gorgeous winter scenes!
Even if this movie didn’t have the fantastic Barbara Crampton in it, and even if it didn’t have all the gore and comeuppance and satisfying violence, I would watch it for this stuff.
Also, I’m rambling. You can’t expect me to be cohesive. Yesterday I wrote so goddamn much about that other movie.
Gore!
[sizzling] / [gurgling] has replaced [revving intensifies] as my favorite subtitle of all time.
Now here’s my favorite shot from this movie.
The end!
I just wanted to say thank you for all of the kind words about my film. I just stumbled across your blog, and was really happy to see what you’d written.