Sunday, May 31, 2015

Hangman (2015)

Adam Mason.  On this blog, I've said some nice things, some not so nice things, and I've been totally mindfucked.  But the mindfuckery and enjoyment have outweighed the "not-so-nice" by far, and I am really excited to see his new movie, Hangman.  The official description is:

Returning from vacation, the Miller family find their home has been broken into. After cleaning up the mess they continue with their lives, shaking off the feeling of being violated. But little do they know the nightmare has just begun.

So I don't drive or own a car since I live in the city, so it never occurred to me that some creeper could watch you park your car at the airport or whatever, break into it, and just hit "go home" on your GPS.  That is frightening!  They know you're not going to be there, because you're in your floppy hat and flip flops getting ready to go chug some margaritas.

Someone breaking into your house and stealing your shit is one thing.  But someone breaking into your house and watching your home movies, eating your food, sitting on your furniture, and touching everything....ugh it's giving me goosebumps.  The victims in question are the Millers, Aaron (Jeremy Sisto), Beth (Kate Ashfield), Marley (Ryan Simpkins) and Max (Ty Simpkins).  The oddness of the break-in (nothing valuable stolen, random things moved around) creeps them out, but they try to get back to their normal lives.  But weird things keep happening, like orange juice left out on the counter, and toilets flushing at random.  Then these instances increase, pointing at adultery, breaking up couples, getting into dreams.

I'm always open to spoilers, but I really don't want to give too much away. From an overall, not-ruining-the-movie perspective, the acting was great, and the cinematic perspective was reminiscent of what I liked about Paranormal Activity, that constant wondering of where the camera will point or cut next.  There's very little blood and gore but just SO MUCH CREEPY.

The whole situation just crawls under your skin because it could happen.  Among the ghosts, jump scares, and overuse of CGI in horror these days, it's not that far of a reach that this whole movie could happen to any one of us. I was genuinely creeped out, the whole movie ties together, and it either opens up for a sequel (eh) or just to leave us all hanging.  As well as installing security systems and erasing our GPS.

3 comments:

Mr. Xploit, Esquire said...

I'm glad you didn't give too much away. You sold me on it giving you the creeps. Good read. Visit me at xploiting.blogspot.com when you get a sec.

Unknown said...

I'd love to watch this but can't find it anywhere!

It's not on Netflix, and I haven't found any download links online either :/

Where did you see it? It wasn't even in theaters here (Canada). It sounds really good though!

The Scream Queen said...

Kyle: It's finding distribution, unfortunately! I'll let you know if I hear anything on the release date!