30 Days of Fright - Prologue

Sometimes life moves at an incredibly slow pace, the hours creeping by at a painful rate. At other times life moves at breakneck speed and you barely have time to notice that the last time a year went by slowly you were probably still in school. Once again, from where I'm standing anyway, another year has shot past and we find ourselves staring down the barrel of another set of the most amazing horror film reviews the world has ever seen - it's year 5 of the 30 Days of Fright!

For the last four years I've taken the opportunity that the month of October brings as it slides towards Hallowe'en to watch a load of horror films and then write reviews, with some pointing out the better elements of those films, though most just making snide put-downs of other people's work. In the best tradition of film critics and hipsters everywhere I let my own conceited notion that I know best about these things run riot and take apart some much loved gems of the genre while elevating unheard of indie movies much higher then they could ever deserve, working on the simple notion that if a film's popular then it's probably shite.

The previous bunch of reviews are available for your consideration here: 2008, here: 2009, here: 2010, and here: 2011,and hopefully like the last few outings you'll find year five to be entertaining, a bit of a laugh, and maybe, just maybe a little bit interesting.

As the actual reviews do take a bit of effort, and because I'm a naturally lazy person, the scoring system hasn't changed a bit over the years and each film still gets rated on its merits (but mostly lack thereof) and assigned a final score on my rather unusual thumb-based scale:

Two Thumbs Firmly Down = One of the worst films ever, never mention this film to anyone nevermind actually watching it!

Two Thumbs Down = Utter Scutter

One Thumb Up, One Thumb Down = Meh, don't go out of your way for it but there's no need to avoid it either

Two Thumbs Up = A brilliant movie, well worth a look

Two Thumbs Firmly Up = A must see, a truly excellent motion picture you should make it your business to see as soon as you can

There is another score that is only used in the most extreme of cases: No Thumbs = no rating as the film is beneath contempt due to the handling of its subject matter - when you consider that these are horror films then that's a pretty extreme rating to get and has so far, only been applied to one nasty little film.

As is tradition, the first film gets its showing tonight, so here we go again... let the 30 Days of Fright begin!