The Quintessentialist

So I finally finished reading Dracula a little while ago and I thought, what better way to end 31 Posts Of Halloween to review the book Dracula by Bram Stocker! The book is split up into mostly diary entries. We the audience get to see the story unfold in multiple perspectives. The main characters we see the story through are Johnathan Harker, Mina Murray, Dr. Seward, and Lucy Westenra. The story begins following Johnathan Harker, as he is traveling to meet Count Dracula. Johnathan is a solicitor. He is supposed to go and see the Count to help him move to London, in the way of getting his paperwork in order. The locals are basically telling him not to go and that he should turn back. Being the clever man that he is Johnathan presses ahead and meets with Dracula. There are a few things that happen that we would consider spooky by todays standards in the story. The first few chapters of this book deal with the interactions of Johnathan and Dracula. Yet as the story progresses we ...

Corpse Bride is a 2005 stop motion animation Tim Burton horrorish film. Corpse Bride is about a young man named Victor (Johnny Depp), as he is set to get married, yet he is unsure if he really wants to or not to this particular gal. So, as one would do, he takes a stroll through the local forest and puts a ring on the finger of a corpse which ends up reanimating it and bring the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter) to life. Victor now finds himself in a marriage proposal which he originally did not think he would be in. So, I honestly didn't watch this movie when I was a kid, but I saw it a few years ago when I was in my teens. I actually enjoyed this movie, and I like seeing it when it's on tv. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone to see Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Tim Burton working together on a project, because it's not like they've every done that before! This is a fun little film, which if you have kids, it would be a good one to watch w...

So, if you've read my earlier reviews, then you may know that I am a fan of the show Penny Dreadful. And I just wanted to share a cool pillow I got a while ago that ties into the show! Alright alright, I'm just using this to segue into an old review I did of the show. Yes I'm cheating today, but I think it's worth it. Here's a link to the Penny Dreadful Series review:  Click here

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina Season 1 Review The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina is my new guilty pleasure I watched The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina over the course of two days, and for all it's cringey moments, and cheesy parts, I found myself helplessly watching this show nonstop because I got invested in the characters. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina follows Sabrina Spellman, a gal that's half mortal and half witch. On her 16th birthday just is supposed to sign her name away to the dark lord, and join the church of night, becoming a true witch and join the ranks of the coven just like the rest of her family. There's one, well more than one, problem, if she goes through with this, and that would be, Sabrina would have to abandon her mortal life and basically give up her free will to serve her new dark master. Yet when the time comes for her to decide, she runs away from the path of night, and attempts to find a middle ground in all of this mess. Wil...

The Transfiguration is a 2016 vampire film, and it's probably the strangest vampire film I've seen in a while. So, The Transfiguration follows a guy named Milo (Eric Ruffin) as he goes out and thinks he is a real vampire, and does some real vampire stuff like drink blood of his victims. He's still in school and lives with his older brother. Milo soon befriends/dates the new girl that moves into his apartment building, Sophie (Chloe Levine). My thoughts? Well, this movie feels long, and by long I mean very long. There are a ton of scenes of no talking and I understand silence can be used to create mood, but it just drags. I felt like they could have easily cut 15 minutes from this film. The acting in the movie is well done however. Eric Ruffin gives a good performance as does Chloe Levine. The actors are fine, and I would watch some of their other work if presented. I think the problem might have been the director wanting to go for more artistic shots rather than practi...

Just wanted to keep this post simple and share a picture of my Jack O'Lantern from last year.

So, last year around this time of year a couple of friends and I went to valley scare. If you don't know what valley scare is, it's an amusement park known regularly as valley fair, but during the Halloween season, it becomes valley scare. So anyways, me and my two friends were having a jolly old time! Then one of my friends, lets call him friend A, and myself decided to pull a little joke on our other friend, friend B. So, friend B was ahead of friend A and I a little ways. Friend A and myself then looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking, and we mentioned it just to confirm. We held back a little bit, and let friend B walk far off ahead, and we were going to watch him from a distance and then jump out and scare him. Then something happened which we did not expect. We lost friend B. Yeah... wasn't our best moment... but, then the search had begun! We were determined to find him! And after about half an hour of searching, friend A said he was going to g...

Tucker And Dale VS Evil is a 2010 horror parody, which is probably one of my favorite parodies out there to date. Tucker And Dale VS Evil is a parody of the cabin in the woods style of horror flick. The film opens to some teens going on vacation, camping. The teens stop at a gas station  and while there they are approached by two hillbillies who creep them out. Now here's where the movie gets interesting, the film switches perspectives to the hillbillies point of view, and thus we follow Tucker and Dale. Tuck and Dale are simply going to there new vacation home up in the woods. There new home is an old cabin, which they decide to repair. The film switches between the point of view of Tucker and Dale and the teens multiple times in the film, and that's where we see the "horror" tropes play out. One of the teens is knocked unconscious and Tucker and Dale try to help her, but the other teens think they kidnapped her. Thus we go forward into one of my favorite parodies...

An Interview with Australian Indie Actor David Black I recently had the chance to talk with Actor David Black. I'm happy to say that this is my first interview on the blog here! I was pleased to interview actor David Black. David Black is an actor from Australia, and he has some interesting things to say in our interview here. So, without further ado, the interview: Quintessentialist - For those that don't know you, please tell us a little about yourself and where you're from? David – Hi Quintessentialist.  Thanks for having me as a guest on your blog.  I’m an actor, director, blogger and cartoonist. With all these creative projects, I started with cartooning and published 3 underground comics before I was 18.  “Gooby, Sartorial Titbits and St Kilda Funnies” were photocopier produced and distributed to shops around Melbourne.  Later, I did a cartoon strip called Punkz for the national rock music magazine, Juke in 1988. After that, I became the Ed...

The Sisters Brothers went far below my expectations and bored my dad and I to death. The Sisters Brothers open up to a gun fight between Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) along with his brother, Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix), as they fight to kill their target. The Sisters Brothers act as hitmen for a guy called, The Commodore. They are instructed to go and kill a chemist named, Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed).   So I went into this film expecting to go and see a fun western movie, and what I go was a borefest. Granted the opening scene was good and the action was fine. However, the film just goes downhill after that. It takes to long to get the ball rolling and at one point it feels like they abandoned the plot altogether in the film. There is so much wasted potential in this movie I'm honestly shocked by how bad it really was. I saw this in an AMC Theater, and they are already overpriced, but this movie was not worth the ticket for admission it was printed on! Honestly it feel...

Horns is a 2013 horror film, that takes some biblical elements and creates an overall interesting film that is worth seeing more than once. Horns follows Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) as after the murder of his girlfriend, everyone in town starts to think that he was the killer. Also, for some odd reason he is growing horns out of his head, and people can't help but to tell the truth around him. Ig must now try to find the true killer, and clear his name. Alright, horns is actually a pretty good film  with some interesting imagery. There is a ton of biblical symbolism featured in the film and the way its presented is well done. Daniel Radcliffe does a good job in this film, and it's probably one of his lesser known films, but he should get more recognition for it. For the most part the other actors in Horns do well, however there are a few hiccups now and again, but that can be forgiven. Horns is a creative film that didn't get much attention, but it really should hav...

So this post isn't a review, but it's just reminiscing on old memories from Halloweens long ago. Remember dressing up on halloween and going trick or treating? Of course you do! it's probably some of the funnest memories of childhood! Running around and getting free candy from strangers, it was awesome. But do you remember what you wore and did? When I was little, I had this fascination with ninja's so I went as a ninja a couple of times. Then I think I went as Darth Vader once or twice. I would always go around the neighborhood with one of my friends, and I used to live in a big neighborhood, so my bag usually would always get full. I remember a couple of the houses would try to scare us, with someone dressed up in a costume and would just sit on a chair acting like a prop, and then all of a sudden they would come to life and jump at us! We didn't have any haunted houses surprisingly in the neighborhood, except I think for two years one house did have one. Well...

Silver Bullets is a 2011 movie, which the coolest part of this movie is the poster. Silver Bullets is a film about an actress that is starring in a werewolf film.  Yet her boyfriend is making a different film, and he casts her best friend as the lead roll in a film of his own. So, this movie is a little different, as it seems like it's a found footage, but I don't think that it is. This is a low quality film, as in production value. Now, some of the actors in this film are pretty decent at, well acting at certain points. With a little (lot) more practice some of them could make a career out of this. Regarding the music and just general audio of this film. The music is very loud compared to the actors voices, and it's overly dramatic at parts. They really should have invested in a better microphone than they had. The audio can just get irritating, and that's one thing they should have worked on. Silver Bullets is not the worst film ever, and for its indie feel, it...

So, this post will not be a review, but a recommendation.  I don't know if you've already heard of this channel on youtube, but if you like horror and monsters you might want to check out a little channel called Crypt TV. Crypt TV has a ton of horror related stuff on their channel, and I think you could probably get that from the name. Anyways, here's a link to check it out! Click  here !

Halloween 2018 is the official sequel to the original Halloween movie, and this film left me smiling out of the theater. In Halloween 2018 Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has been training for decades for the return of Michael Myers. Laurie now has an estranged daughter, Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak).  Allyson wants to get close to her grandmother, but Karen doesn't want her to. Then just for Halloween, Michael Myers escapes, and the hunt is on! But the real question between Laurie and Michael is, who is the hunter and who is the prey? Alright, this film is everything I wanted out of one of these films. The acting is great, the music is perfect, and it really is everything that one would want to see in one of these films. Halloween  is so fun, and it looked like the actors also had a lot of fun with this film as well. Jamie Lee Curtis plays such a powerful character, yet still flawed, which grounds Laurie Strode down into reality more. Hon...

Angelica is a 2015 gothic horror film set in Victorian England, which is pretty decent. Angelica is about a young couple that has a daughter. The couple is of the mother, Constance (Jena Malone), and the father, Dr. Joseph Barton (Ed Stoppard). It's probably then a given, that their daughter's name is Angelica. Constance starts to become more protective of her daughter, and soon some ghostly things start happening around the house. I was surprised to find out that the actress that plays Constance, Jena Malone, also played Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games Franchise. This is a dark film, and by dark I mean in tone but not in overall style. It gives a glimpse into the lives of people from another time who just so happen to suffer from a supernatural plight. I did find the tone of the film quite interesting. Yet the entire style is in a word, captivating. Angelica is one film that I will want to have a second viewing of, because I feel as though it will require it. Granted t...

Stephanie is a 2017 horror film that was not bad, but not really that great of a film either, it's just different. Stephanie is about a young girl named Stephanie whom is left alone for some time. There are hints that some sort of devastating event is occurring, but it doesn't seem like it has been of much consequence to Stephanie thus far. Alright, this is one of those films that you probably didn't hear about, and granted I didn't either, but it sounded decent enough to give it a go, and my overall thoughts on the film are... eh.  The young actress who plays Stephanie does a fine job, as do all the other actors in this film, but it's just not grossly captivating. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film, I've covered plenty of bad films so far this month. There's something about this film that is interesting but at the same time not. It's quite strange and very hard to explain. It's been a while sense I've had mixed feelings abo...

Nosferatu is a 1922 vampire film based off of the work of Bram Stocker. I can understand why Bram's wife didn't like this movie. Alright, I'm not going to be explaining the plot for this film , as the story is pretty straight forward, and I've already done another  review  of a Dracula film. Plus this is going to be pretty short. So... I found this movie to be quite dull, and boring. My gaze often wandered, and it just couldn't hold my interest. I do enjoy the story of Dracula, but this film is nothing but a bastardized version of the original. They change names, and plot, leaving whole sections out of the original story. Some of the visuals are interesting given the time period and the tech they had available, but that doesn't excuse it from poor storytelling. I think that I went into this movie a little overhyped, which I really should have lowered my expectations. Even though this movie kinda sucks, Nosferatu is one of those films you might want to se...

This Review was provided by, MJP's Reviews if you would like to check out more by this blogger, here's a link to his blog: http://www.mjpsreviews.com Maniac is the new miniseries of Netflix, released on the platform on September 21, 2018, based on the Norwegian eponymous series developed by the actor and screenwriter Espen PA Lervaag. Here is my review The protagonists are Owen Milgrim, a boy from a wealthy family who completely ignores him because of his schizophrenia, and Annie Landsberg, a young toxic-addicted girl who seems to have a very messed up life. Both find themselves participating in a trial of a new medicine that could save the world and something strange seems to happen between them. Maniac is an extraordinary series. Its strength lies in the writing and in the great direction, which is almost cinematic. The writers did a great job and it was not easy given the kind of series it is. Without making spoilers, Maniac is a series that will make you laugh as ...

This one is not a review per se, but I thought this was a nice little short film, that I wanted to share with you. I think it's an interesting concept, and it would be interesting to see this made into a full feature length film. Enjoy!

The Hallow is a 2015 horror film set in Ireland, and it was pretty good. The Hallow follows a family that moves into the country in Ireland for the husbands work, but the supernatural beings that are within the forrest, don't like their new neighbors. Alright, so I've been wanting to see this movie for the past couple of months, and I've finally gotten around to watching it. After viewing, The Hallow, I thought it was actually pretty good. The monster designs are pretty creative, and it's based off of Irish lore. They don't delve to deep into the lore however, but it's still interesting and now I want to read up on it more. There definitely  is an eerie feeling throughout the film, and it's done in such an effective way, I have to applaud the film for it. The acting in this film is well done, and it has a small budget feel to the film as well, so given that, it really is impressive what they accomplished in making this movie. There wasn't a bad ac...

American Psycho is a 2000 horror black comedy film that didn't exactly live up to my expectations. Alright this is going to be a short review for this movie. American Psycho is about an office guy that is a serial killer by night. It's an interesting premise for a film, but for me it really doesn't live up to the hype. The actors in this film do a fine enough job. Some are better than others in this movie. I just found some of the characters to be quite dull, and not in the, there supposed to be that way sense, but in the, why did they say yes to the script sense. Some of the scenes are pretty creative and I cannot deny that, but I frequently found myself losing interest in the film. I will say that I do enjoy the narration from the main character, as it provides an eerie sense about him, kinda like there is something off but you just can't put your finger on it in the beginning of the film. You may have seen this movie already and have enjoyed it, and that's...

Stonehearst Asylum is a 2014 gothic film that truly is gothic.  Stonehearst Asylum follows  Dr. Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess), fresh from Oxford, as he is sent to an Asylum to complete his training. At the asylum he becomes infatuated with one of the patients, Mrs. Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), and he assists Dr. Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), yet there is something unusual about this asylum, more than one normally would think. Now, this movie is based off of a story by Edgar Allen Poe, of which whom, I consider myself a fan of, and after watching Stonehearst Asylum, I want to read the original story. Since I do own a copy of the Complete Works Of Edgar Allen Poe, I just might read it soon enough. Now this movie is gothic in the truest sense of the word. It has insanity, romance, beautiful twists and turns, mystery, and creeping about at night in those long corridors. You don't see many gothic films, and that's a shame, because if there could be more produced in the manner ...

A Star Is Born was a good movie, and I was surprised to find out that Bradley Cooper was the director for this film. A Star Is Born follows Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) as he is a professional musician. One night he stumbles into a bar and hears a girl singing. This girl is named Ally (Lady GaGa) and the two of them hit it off great! They are perfect for each other and their romance blooms along with Ally's rise to stardom. This movie has already gained favorable  reviews , and I can see why. Lady GaGa is a fantastic actress, and Bradley Cooper delivers yet again another strong performance. I was surprised to see Sam Elliott in this movie. I didn't watch to many of the trailers, but from what I gathered, I didn't expect to see him in this film. I would also like to note, that all of the supporting cast did a fine job as well. I was very surprised to find out that this movie was directed by Bradley Cooper. I'm not exactly sure how many movies he has directed be...

Queen Of The Damned is a 2002 vampire movie based on the Anne Rice novel of the same name. Okay, I'll admit that I enjoy a good vampire film. Heck, I even like a good gothic film. I want to know one thing though, who the hell green lit this movie? I don't really know how to describe this film... I think Queen Of The Damned is supposed to be a sequel film to, Interview With A Vampire, but it doesn't seem like it. I paused the film at about the half way mark, and that's when the conflict is first introduced. Everything before that is pretty much an incoherent mess. The acting is subpar, and the actors seem like this is the first time that they were in front of a camera. It almost reminds me of that terrible  Dracula  film that had Bela Lugosi in it. The main characters over act or under act, but they never truly give a good performance. This movie seems like it was made by someone who wanted to be a vampire and a goth yet knew nothing about either. Queen Of The Da...