"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Joe Begos’

Christmas Bloody Christmas

Tuesday, December 20th, 2022

CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS is the new one from writer/director Joe Begos. I previously reviewed his first two features, ALMOST HUMAN (2013) and THE MIND’S EYE (2015), but I’ve been sleeping on his 2019 double whammy of BLISS and VFW. Nevertheless I had to see his new one as soon as it hit Shudder because it’s Christmas horror. There’s a timeliness factor.

It’s a low budget movie but seems huge and lush compared to those other two I mentioned. It continues in the same tradition of filtering a specific ‘80s horror aesthetic through Begos’ brain, now with more dialogue and humor. But I wouldn’t call it a comedy. After the comical advertisements that open the movie and introduce the absurd horror premise, there aren’t really jokes. The laughs come from the characters themselves being funny. Otherwise it comes across as very serious – an odd choice that I like. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Mind’s Eye

Friday, October 14th, 2016

tn_mindseyeThe cover of THE MIND’S EYE quotes a Film School Rejects review saying “The best SCANNERS sequel we never got.” And it really does seem like a SCANNERS sequel, but with the raw feel of a modern low-budget American indie instead of the cheesy ’90s Canadian b-movie style of the official SCANNERS sequels. This actually takes place in 1990, the year before Christian Duguay made SCANNERS II: THE NEW ORDER. So chronologically it’s actually the first SCANNERS sequel.

1990 is also the year that THE MIND’S EYE: A COMPUTER ANIMATION ODYSSEY came out, beginning the popular series of early computer animation clips set to Thomas Dolby and Jan Hammer music. It is not made clear in the movie if the telekinetic powers are supposed to be caused by watching THE MIND’S EYE tapes, but obviously I’m going to assume they are. That was how I got mine. (read the rest of this shit…)

Almost Human

Wednesday, April 20th, 2016

tn_almosthumanALMOST HUMAN is a very simple low budget movie from first-time-director Joe Begos. (He has since become a second-time-director with THE MIND’S EYE, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to enthusiastic reviews, and recently got picked up for distribution.) The story begins with the protagonist Seth (Graham Skipper, TALES OF HALLOWEEN) running to his friend Mark (Josh Ethier, also the producer and sound designer and an editor on many other movies)’s house in terror from some lights he saw and can’t seem to explain. Against Seth’s pleas, Mark goes outside to investigate, and he disappears.

The majority of the movie takes place 2 years later according to the text on screen, “almost 2 years” later according to Seth. He’s a mess now, his boss at the hardware store thinking he’s on coke, Mark’s girlfriend Jen (Vanessa Leigh, veteran of around 20 obscure indie movies just in the few years before this came out) not wanting to talk to him when he shows up at her work warning that he thinks something is happening again. (read the rest of this shit…)