Final Hallo-Watch: Frankenhooker (1990)

Watched:  10/31/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Frank Henenlotter

So, I wrapped up Halloween with Frankenhooker (1990) a movie I've somehow not seen before in the past 35 years, but been aware of since at least 1993.

Wow.  They truly do not make them like this anymore.

I was never a Troma guy, but my continual viewing of USA Up All Night in the 1990's should be a sign of what I will tune to on a Friday night.  I am happy to go in for questionable taste.  I am a person of deeply questionable taste, if this blog is any indication.

My favorite bit was the revived Elizabeth storming around Manhattan spouting prior dialog and knocking people over.  That's just good stuff.  I guess Patty Mullen was a Penthouse pet who barely did any movies, but she really went for it and she's really funny.

Anyway, the movie is kinda exactly what I expected in some ways, but vacillated between truly hilarious and "okay, I get it.  We can move on." in the ways of these kinds of movies.  What I will say is that the end was *chef's kiss*.  Glad I finally watched it.

JLC Hallo-Watch: Halloween H20 - 20 Years Later (1998)

Watched:  10/30/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steve Miner

This movie has a "and introducing Josh Hartnett" credit at the beginning, and knowing what we'd soon know about Hartnett's quality as a lead and Hollywood hunk...  it's absolutely inexplicable that he has one of the dumbest haircuts in cinema.  I was alive and a young adult in 1998.  Nobody had this haircut, this was not a haircut I literally saw on anyone then, before then, or since. It's somewhere between the male version of the Karen/ Kate Gosselin haircut, like he just woke up, like maybe he deeply offended a barber, or someone pulled a prank on him or her took pinking shears to his own head.  

"...so you're saying there's a chance?"

It's so odd, in part because the hair changes moment by moment in the film, like they really couldn't manage it.  It required some weird trimming, and in some shots it's one way, and some shots it's not, and he just looks insane through the whole movie.

The haircut is just a minor indicator of what's happening with Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998), a shockingly unnecessary movie and a reminder of why sequels and horror movies have such a bum rap with many critics.  It is predictable, it's not enough and too much, doesn't seem to know when Halloween occurs or think the holiday matters in the Halloween franchise.   

Hallo-Franken-Watch: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/30/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

What's not to like in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)?

Yes, if you come in expecting to be genuinely scared, that won't happen.  If you want to see something weird, uncanny, funny, touching, cheer-worthy, wildly subversive and camp (a word we throw around a lot but don't correctly use), Bride is your movie.  

This movie is about so many things.  

Rather than have someone directly speak to the audience in this installment, we recreate the Percy and Mary Shelley (nee Godwin) and Lord Byron conversations that famously spawned Frankenstein.  Mary Shelley is posed as the one explaining the hubris of what we're to see, as the scene echoes what will come later with Dr.'s Frankenstein and Pretorious.  

Hallo-Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (1931)

Watched:  10/28/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

As longtime readers know, every year I watch Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as we enter the spooky season.  

Since last Halloween, I picked up the first film in 4K, curious about how a film I know as much for its 1930's black and white grain and the hiss on the soundtrack as I know any other aspect of the movie would present in the format.  Would they clean it up, or if would they leave those artifacts intact?  

The answer is: aside from one shot, I highly recommend this 4K transfer.  There's some hiss and some grain, but especially that hiss familiar to early sound films has been reduced to a less noticeable white noise.  The grain is still there, more or less.  I was replaying it with a commentary track (that was great) and walked close to the TV and it is WILD to see what the pixels are doing with this black and white.

I didn't pick up any weird AI mucking with the picture, and it just mostly looked like a very clean print, with many of the minute defects corrected.  In one shot, an item in the foreground is kind of wobbly, like the algorithm didn't know what to do with it.  But I'll leave that for you to discover (though I'll never not see it now).

Hallo-Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (2025)

Watched:  10/26/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Twenty years ago, on the heels of the runaway success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson was given carte blanche to make an adaptation of the 1933 film King Kong.  It's tough to get into all the details and I'll spare you, but the basic gist is that Peter Jackson had long said his favorite movie of all time, and the one that inspired him as a filmmaker, was the Fay Wray screamer.  

The 2005 Kong film was not well received by critics or audiences.  Yes, it looked beautiful and was technically well-directed, but a near 3 hour run-time is quite a bit more than the 100-minute runtime of the original.  It was just too much of everything, a movie lasting the duration of two movies, where everything is turned up to an 11.

And, so it was, I was nervous going into Frankenstein (2025).  

Director Guillermo del Toro broke out with a few key films at the turn of the century, and made a reputation for himself as a master of the macabre.  Some I've liked, some not so much.  For a long time, he's very loudly proclaimed the 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff his favorite film.  And, hey, it's all-timer for me, as well.  

And, look, I will publicly say:  the book came out in 1818.  Monkeying about with the story is fair game.  After all, I love stuff like the Universal movies, I like Frankenstein comics sometimes, I love Creature Commandos...  sure.  Do whatever.

But I'm not sure what del Toro was doing, what he was trying to say or why he changed so many things in his movie from the novel when it seemed like it made the overall story of the novel weaker.  But I also think I'd need to watch the movie again to understand what he was doing and why as I'd be far less distracted by his careening variations from the text while also playing up certain aspects of the text. 

Light Spoilers

Hallo-Watch: Werewolves (2024)

Watched:  10/25/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven C. Miller

On paper, I totally get what Werewolves (2024) was doing.  We're going to do The Warriors' run across a city plagued by monsters.  And the monster that makes the most sense to run from, without spending a lot of time worrying about the set-up, is werewolves.  We all get werewolves.  Moon.  Roar.  Kill kill.

It's basically an excuse to have a straight hour of nothing but action sequences as Frank Grillo and Katrina Law shoot their way across the city.  What's interesting is that it's a movie completely devoid of character moments, themes or story.  It is just a series of things happening.  Which is really a weird way to do things, because it *looks* like a movie in many ways.  It just functions more like...  a horror action screen saver.

Initially I was like "huh, this is like a SyFy movie but with good actors and a budget", but it's actually a Bizarro SyFy movie.  SyFy movies are mostly people standing around talking because they can't afford to do their bad FX.  Or driving from place to place looking mildly cross.  And then you get a giant CGI shark and snake at the end.  SyFy movies pull from the Banal Character Development Playbook and run through the motions of how this giant shark attacking people ties to their personal struggle.  But in the case of Werewolves, ain't no one got time for that.  What we do have are several practical werewolf suits, one detailed werewolf head we'll see in profile about 55 times during the movie, and Frank Grillo.  And shooting up sets, fighting and explosions.  And no real character beats.

Crampton Hallo-Watch: From Beyond (1986)

Watched:  10/25/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  Third?

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Pal @iffywizardry watched From Beyond (1986) as part of his horror-a-day Halloween watching, and I decided, yeah, I wanted to re-watch it this year.  Because who doesn't need more Barbara Crampton in their movie-watching, really?

I wrote this up just last year, so no real need to re-litigate.  If you read that brief write-up, I kinda underplayed the push the movie makes about the pineal-gland stuff and madness and sex intertwining.  And it's right there.  And leads to the most famous scene in the movie, which sure made an impression on a generation of horror fans.  

But, yeah, this is a movie about a bunch of people with sexual hang-ups, and very little in the way of discussing it, and instead manifesting as weird shit.  And it's kind of great.  

It's a movie with transdimensional monsters, a warped villain, and a guy eating brains.  What's not to like?

Anyhoo, like Re-Animator, this is an oddly perfect movie hitting all the right notes and gets better every time you watch it, which for genre film I think is *the* defining sign of greatness, whether we're talking horror or The Third Man.    

I would pick this up on 4K, but it's currently $47.  Which... come on, man.

Hallo-Watch: The Crimson Cult (1968)

Watched:  10/24/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vernon Sewell

The past few years I had seen a few stills of Barbara Steele in this movie, and it was enough to make me wonder what American International Pictures was up to with this one.  This movie exists with a few names, but I found it under the title The Crimson Cult (1968) on Amazon, but it also is known by The Curse of the Crimson Altar.   

And who wouldn't be curious about whatever is happening here?

it's a living

Our movie is about a very British alpha-male who is an antiques dealer whose brother sends him some items at his shop, where our lead is very handsy with his employee, when he learns his brother didn't return from a trip as planned.  He picks up and heads to an old mansion in a small town where he first comes across people reveling in the way of the swinging 60's that is supposed to look wild but looks like a room of people in need of an intervention.  

Upstairs, just chilling, he comes across Christopher Lee who is like "I've never heard of your brother.  But why not just stay here at the mansion with my hot niece and her drugs and booze?"  Our Hero does, which:  fair.

He meets a professor, played by Boris Karloff, who is the foremost authority on local history and seems to take their local witchery stuff very seriously, indeed.  And *hates* that Our Hero is unimpressed with his selection of brandy.

Our Hero goes to a sort of lo-fi pre-Wicker Man burning of an effigy that is part of a town's ritual around a witch.

Our Hero, while manhandling the niece occasionally, lazily looks for his brother, who he, 2/3rds of the way through the movie, recalls used a nom-de-voyage, and suddenly everyone remembers him.  Sigh.

The movie has some really fun bits.  All of the cult-dream sequences are just gold, and it's the only place we get to see Barbara Steele in her glory as the blue-tinted witch.  There's other general wackiness, secret passages, etc...  but the story just feels like it was a total afterthought.

It is Karloff's last movie, and he's clearly mentally 100% there, and physically declining.  Which, fair enough, he was born in 1887, so by 1968, he's not a kid.  And, in a twist, he is NOT evil in this movie.  He's just crotchety.  Which we don't know til the last 1/4th of the film.  

Anyway, the movie is *fine*.  But the highlight is 100% the cult sequences, which are just fun.  (This is not an endorsement of witchy cults, but it looks like a good Saturday night activity.)

Hallo-Watch: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987)

Watched:  10/24/2025

Format:  Simon's 4K

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Carpenter

As I said to Simon 3/4ths of the way through this movie, "I would have loved this in high school".  

That isn't to say I didn't like it *now* on my first viewing.  I did.  I just never got around to it, which is kind of a bad call with John Carpenter.  

Once again Carpenter tells a story about a group of people stuck in a single location as things go sideways (Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, etc...) but this time he's getting metaphysical.  

Donald Pleasance plays a Catholic priest who learns a secret Catholic sect has been keeping the world's biggest secret.  Apparently they have a cosmic horror buried under a church in LA, but they need SCIENCE.  

To this end, they recruit a world famous physicist and his PhD students to come in and take a look at what they've got (a cylinder spinning and full of green liquid), and scientists from a few other disciplines.  They all set up shop in an old church, and begin to try to sort out what's happening.

Team, what's happening isn't good.  

What follows is a bit of cosmic horror that plays out over about two days inside the church.  And I am not here to spoil it.

Now, the movie has some issues.  I think they could have cut off the first ten minutes and we'd lose very little.  We could have had more of the great characterization we got in other Carpenter films with large casts like The Thing and Escape From New York.   Someone could explain who was keeping all 700 candles going in the basement of the church.   And I kept wanting to know why the movie wasn't about a school like Georgetown that is both high end and is also a Jesuit school.  We could have had a nice connection there, but it also might have undercut the idea Carpenter had about faith in both religion and science failing in the face of horror.

And that's the bit that I would have dug in high school.  Gimme that "your much beloved rules aren't going to help you now" jazz, and back then, especially peering into the unknown.  

I do wish Carpenter had found more ways to tie in the quantum physics conversation into what was going on with our cosmic problem.  It's okay that it kind of doesn't, but so much time is spent worrying about Schroedinger's cat and the nature of reality once we're talking particle physics, I can make some loose connections narratively, but it would have been cool to see those things tie directly together, even with some hand waving.

Anyway, I'm super bummed I took so long to get to this one, but it sure feels like a great movie to team up with The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness.  

Fun fact!  That's a young Dirk Blocker in this movie, who would go on to play Hitchcock on Brooklyn 99.  

Hallo-Watch: Black Sabbath (1963)

Watched:  10/23/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mario Bava

This movie was baller.  

I haven't seen much in the way of Mario Bava, and maybe I need to remedy that.  Previously, I'd only seen Danger: Diabolik, which I still think kicks ass.  And I knew Bava was more famous for his horror films, so pairing his name with Boris Karloff, and I was in.

This is an anthology film.  And so I was able to check off my annual Halloween anthology film viewing, while also getting three very different stories.  

• The first was about a nurse called to tend to the body of her client/patient, who held seances as a spiritualist.  She steals a ring from the body, and immediately things go badly for her.  
• The second is a young woman who seems to have an active nightlife, and keeps receiving phone calls, threatening her, describing what she's wearing and what she's doing, although she's by herself in her apartment.  
• The third is a longer story about a nobleman who comes first upon a corpse and then upon a family who inform him that their father likely made the dead bandit into a corpse, but that the bandit was a sort of vampire.  Soon, the father (Karloff) returns from the mountains looking pretty rough.  

I've seen a few Amicus films and other anthologies, and other films by American International Pictures, and I guess it's Mario Bava working his magic on a budget, because this movie is just much better looking than 95% of the other movies in this budget range.  You can get a lot of mileage out of using a lot of colored lights, as it turns out.  Only cowards ask why there's purple and green light.  

The scenes also all really do have a pretty good scare factor.  The first one is pretty boilerplate stuff, with ghosts coming for a badly behaving nurse.  The second plays hard with the fear of a woman alone in her house (I do want to show Jamie the Joan Crawford movie Sudden Fear and Ida Lupino movie Beware, My Lovely.  The third movie lets Karloff go nuts, and we're all better for it.  He looks like a crazed Kurt Vonnegut as a 19th Century European vampire.  And it has some genuine great sequences that gave me genuine thrills, if not chills.  

In between, Karloff hams it up as a horror host, and it's gold.  

I had a groovy time watching this one, and recommend it. 

Hallo-Watch: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Watched:  10/22/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eli Craig

Ha!  I had zero idea what this was.  I just googled "Halloween Horror Comedy" and this came up on every list, so I gave it a spin.

I don't want to spoil this for anyone, but I'll say...  if you think the first twenty minutes are a little awkward or slow, hang in there.  There are absolute looney tunes moments in this that had me laughing so hard I missed the next minute.  Maybe that's me!  But I get why people love this movie.  

It's not perfect, but for a movie that knows "okay, you get it, we're out" just under the 90 minute mark, it's kinda ideal.  

Hallo-Watch: The Exorcist (1973)

Watched:  10/21/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Third or Fourth

Director:  William Friedkin

I put on The Exorcist (1973) before Jamie went to bed, and she immediately asked and then answered the question I'd asked myself.  When had I last seen this?  She informed me I'd shown her the movie circa 1998, so that is likely when I last saw it.  Which is wild.  I quite like The Exorcist.  But it is a journey.   It's not a movie I put on without wanting to watch the whole thing.  Obviously.

I have no notes.  I think this is one of those movies that is beyond comment in 2025, and has already been talked to death.  I wouldn't change a damn thing about this movie, and I have no questions about it.  

JLC HalloWatch: Halloween (1978)

Watched:  10/20/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  John Carpenter

I had been a bit dissatisfied with my Halloween horror movie viewing and decided to put on a favorite to cleanse the palette.  

Also, I don't always feel like an upgrade to 4K is necessary if I have a BluRay, but somehow I'd made it to 2025 without a BluRay of Halloween (1978), and I have to say, a 4K disc was the right choice.  The picture is phenomenal, the blacks and shadowing, which are key to the whole movie, are rendered perfectly (on my aging Samsung TV) and the image looks great without anything I detected as artificial or weird in the 4K transfer/ clean-up.

Halloween probably seems slow to modern audiences used to getting carried along on a rocket ride from the start of the credits, but I think for this movie to work, you need the sharp shock of the opener and then the hard gear shift to suburban normality as Michael Myers circles closer and closer, slowly building up the speed until we land in the red zone.  

That is far from a new observation, but what do you want from a free internet site?

Hallo-Watch: Suitable Flesh (2023)

Watched:  10/18/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joe Lynch

Written by Dennis Paoli, who wrote Re-Animator, From Beyond, Bodysnatchers, and Castle Freak, which Stuart Gordon would film, Suitable Flesh (2023), directed by Joe Lynch, carries on the same tradition of adapting H.P. Lovecraft and creating a weird, off-kilter, occasionally hilarious horror film that was what I was looking for after a few Halloween horror movies had left me cold.

Heather Graham plays a psychiatrist associated with good ol' Miskatonic University who is in a padded room, speaking with her fellow doctor and friend, played by Barbara Crampton.  Graham relates the tale of how she was visited by a young man (Judah Lewis) who has found her as she wrote the book on out of body experiences.  And, boy howdy, is he, Asa, having them. He claims a man, his father who is not his father, is trying to steal his body.

Hallo-Watch: Barbarian (2022)

Watched:  10/17/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Zach Cregger

So, this is a movie by the guy behind the very popular 2025 film Weapons, which I do plan to watch at some point.  And when I said "yes, I will see Weapons", folks asked "but have you seen Barbarian (2022)?"  To which I would say "no".  Until NOW.

So...  this movie is part of the horror genre of inbred underground/ remotely dwelling folks who are going to give our unsuspecting leads a very bad time.  Or just weirdos living in a place.  So, movies like Death Line immediately come to mind.   But also The Hills Have Eyes.  The People Under the Stairs.  CHUD, I guess.  One could even point to Psycho (and I'll circle back to that)

I don't mean to say there's nothing special about this movie, but it feels like a Polly Pocket version of one of those movies.  Only, taking inspiration from some real-life cases of psychos kidnapping women and keeping them in their basement.  

Hallo-Watch: Salem's Lot (2024)

Watched:  10/15/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gary Dauberman

How does one make a movie that is supposed to be horrifying just weirdly annoying to watch?

Salem's Lot (2024) is here to crack this mystery wide open.  

Poor Steven King.  Probably tired of being mistaken for author Stephen King who wrote the book this movie is based on, which had a TV series or some such of it made back when I was a wee tot and missed the show.  And Stephen King has become a master of horror novels which have only been made into good movies if Stanley Kubrick takes the novel as a suggestion or its Rob Reiner making Stand By Me, which is not horror.    I do like Christine, though.  And Silver Bullet has its moments.  But neither is a patch on the books.*

Writer/ Director Gary Dauberman took a beloved American novel, wrote down "vampires" on a yellow pad, jotted down the character names from the book, and as near as Wikipedia can tell me, paid little attention to anything else.  And, instead, he wrote a nonsense script where everyone is dumb as a bag of rocks to the point where I was wondering if the movie was supposed to be a satire or spoof at times.  

Hallo-Watch: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Watched:  10/14/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  William Dieterle

Back in the 1970's and early 1980's, we were coming out of a monster movie craze aimed at kids.  I don't know how serious the craze was, but it did mean I wound up with a lot of monster movie books - but there was never a great criteria for what made a movie monster.  You might see the Wolf Man listed, which made sense - he changes shape and attacks nice folks.  And then you'd see The Phantom of the Opera, who is just a dude with an unfortunate condition and a penchant for sopranos, but did murder plenty of people.  And then, like, Jaws. So, large animals.   

Even as a kid I found the inclusion of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) odd.  He was just a guy with a physical condition, and he wasn't out slitting throats or anything.  If his condition made him a monster, I had an elementary school guidance counselor who should have been far spookier and less of a great guy.

In short, this is a drama, not a horror movie.  It would be like calling Mask a horror movie because it has make-up effects to change an actor's appearance.  You live and learn.

Anyway, there is this 1939 version starring Charles Laughton and a very young Maureen O'Hara  (she's like 18 here) and then there's the OG silent version starring Lon Chaney, which I've never seen, but I will take in soon.  I've seen the Disney version on a 13" TV on VHS once, didn't like it much, and moved on with my life.

Hallo-Watch: The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

Watched:  10/12/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  George Miller

I checked Roger Ebert's review of The Witches of Eastwick (1987).  Look, some movies are a product of their time, and this is one.  Ebert found it an edgy, sexy romp.  And that was how I remember the movie being discussed in 1987.

I finally got to the movie here in 2025, and in short, all of the interesting bits are left off-screen.  We hear about them, can infer or guess other bits.  But we're still in 1980's America here, and if you want to not wind up in the midnight movie ghetto, you keep it polite so Mom and Dad have a movie they can sneak off to go see and leave you alone with a rented copy of Beastmaster.  

The Witches of Eastwick is about two divorcees and a widow (Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher) who live in a small Rhode Island town where they are hit upon by married men and saddled with lives they don't want.  The three get together on Thursdays to eat processed crap food, drink, play cards and have someone listen.

During one such session, they describe what they want in a man, and, lo and behold, these three women - with what X-Men comics would call latent magical abilities - seem to summon exactly that man to their town in the form of Jack Nicholson/ some light version of Satan.  

Nicholson buys a massive mansion (think Newport on steroids) and proceeds to be an ass around town and impresses everyone he meets.  

He swiftly seduces Cher, Sarandon and... in front of the other two, Pfeiffer.  

Chabert Hallo-Watch: Haul Out The Halloween (2025)

Watched: 10/12/2025

Format:  Hallmark+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Job: Copywriter/ Children's Book Author

Location of story:  Evergreen Lane - which I think is in Salt Lake City

new skill:  it's an old skill remembered - how to draw and write kid's books

Man:  Wes Brown

Job of Man:  Architect

Goes to/ Returns to:  stays in same place (this is the 3rd installment)

Event:  Halloween street fair

Food:  Cookies

Well, Ms. Lacey Chabert has released a new movie upon the Hallmark channel, and so we're back!

This is the third installment in the Haul Out the Holly Saga, a movie series which is about people who are absolutely nuts for holidays, their HOA and rules.  We've abandoned Christmas for Halloween this go-round, which - given the first movies are about going over the top with traditions - seems appropriate.  

This is, I should mention, a wacky comedy series with everything about the 'burbs heightened and zany, so don't take it too seriously.  It's a departure from Hallmark's usual "the characters are all smiling to let you know a joke happened" style of comedy, and, instead, works more like an 00's-era comedy - complete with joke-every-15-second pop culture referencing and a rap by Octogenarians.  

Hallo-Watch: Hereditary (2018)

Watched:  10/12/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ari Aster

I really liked Midsommar by the same director, and I'd heard about 75% good things about Hereditary (2018) and maybe 25% meh to bad.  

Alas, the only scary thing in this movie is the pacing.   I get trying to build a mood, but holy cats, the mood should not be "for the love of Mike, get on with it".  The two hour run time felt like more than three.  And it just wasn't my bag, baby.  

I guess maybe if I hadn't already seen Midsommar, this might have been more effective, but that is not how things transpired.  Frankly, I was shocked at the audacity of Aster to have two movies with such similar endings back to back.  

The premise is fine, I guess.  Weird, controlling mother dies.  Daughter is accidentally killed.  Whoops, there's a secret cult worshipping an off-brand demon who has inhabited the daughter/ is merged with her? and now, in a ghostly fashion, slowly bothers this family to death.  And it's one of those movies where the evil wins (dramatic music).  Which would mean something if I cared what happened to any single character is this movie.  Temu Satan is going to take over the world because of these dopes?  I guess we got what we paid for.

I think the thing we're supposed to be impressed by are moods and the kooky connections we see, like Charlie, the girl, meaningfully cutting the head off a dead bird.  And oh boy, will decapitation ever be a motif.  Or her wanting to build effigies (much as her mother does in her own way).  

The selling point is supposed to be the family trauma.  Which, okay.  But... I didn't know these people at any point when they weren't brooding or gnashing their teeth or both.  So that's it - that's how I know them.  Unhappy people who become increasingly unhappy.

Meanwhile, the music is doing a lot of heavy lifting to insist scenes are intense or scary as we just kinda sit there as an audience waiting for the next piece of movie plot track to get laid down.  

I dunno, I just feel like I've seen one too many cult movies, and this one sort of just was that mixed with the 2010's horror trend of "the unknown" bothering nice white folks in their semi-rural house.  I didn't care about what was happening at any given moment, which is a weird way to feel when you're watching a movie.  If I'd turned it off and read the Wikipedia synopsis, I think I would have gotten the same amount out of the experience.