This movie adaptation takes the imagery from the book’s nightmarish illustrations, and the urban legend tales that spooked us out so much as kids, and combines them into a “kids’ horror film” that manages to be the dark, twisted, no-holds-barred kids’ horror film that we have often lamented from our childhoods. A pleasant surprise and a fun film to talk about.
We really wanted to fall in love with Making Contact (originally titled Joey), but it just didn’t make any damn sense. Still, the fantastic visuals, cinematography and ambition previews good things to come later.
It turned out to be much scarier than we remembered, making it a perfect selection to continue our month of family-friendly horror films. And the remake is on the way, so we’ll see how it measures up to the original.
What starts out as a simple ghost story takes a sharp and somewhat baffling turn. But what we can say about The Watcher In The Woods is that it’s definitely unique and controversial – and Bettie Davis’ role as Mrs. Aylwood is iconic.
And yes, the similarity is strong: A young boy is forced to use traps to protect his home after a menacing Santa slides down his chimney. Although it’s much darker than most holiday movies, what we found in this forgotten French flick was a lot of heart and a fun ride. Recently remastered, you can now catch it exclusively on the Shudder network.
