Movies on Charity Froggenhall

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:40:43 -0400

There are no words. Star Trek actor Sir Patrick Stewart dies aged 86

Actor Sir Patrick Stewart has died aged 86 following a “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia”, a post on his Instagram has said. The post said he died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles and that he was in the loving care of his wife Sunny.

So deeply unfair coming the same week as Walter “Chekov” Koenig’s passing.

He was a man. Take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again.

The House Was Not Hungry Then, and Other Houses That Are Not Sane

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 16:49:54 -0400

Finished watching: The House Was Not Hungry Then 🍿

Here there be spoilers.

Shirley Jackson opens The Haunting of Hill House by calmly informing you that Hill House is not sane. It’s right up there with “The man in black fled into the desert, and the gunslinger followed” as a perfect opening line for a story. And it repeated itself inside my head while I was watching Harry Aspinwall’s The House Was Not Hungry Then, because this felt like what Hill House: The Early Years must have been like. Before the evil hardened into the foundation and worked its way into the cracks in the walls.

The setup is simple. A young woman goes looking for her estranged father and breaks into an empty house in the Scottish countryside. People who visit that house tend to disappear. A man posing as a realtor keeps bringing them there.

The camera angles slowly command your attention. We cut to different rooms in the house, but each room has a fixed camera view. Action sometimes happens around the edges of the frame. Some online reviewers hate this. I slowly came to realize that this is by design. The house itself is choosing what you see. You’re firmly within its world and its rules.

Other houses that are not sane

Somewhere in the first half hour I started building a list, because why not whip up a new taxonomy before breakfast. These are places that feel like they exist in the same universe, hotspots where reality goes a little wrong:

Hill House
The Overlook from The Shining, book and movie both
The house in Burnt Offerings
The tunnel in Mike Flanagan’s Absentia
The Backrooms
And now this house

Kinship, not theft

Earlier the same day I watched Insidious: Out of the Further, which has a pillow fort scene that suddenly expands into something vast. Hey dawg, we heard you liked Backrooms, so we put some Backrooms in your Backrooms. ☑️ On to the next trope.

The House Was Not Hungry Then has that same liminal feeling, and so do Skinamarink and Absentia, but none of it feels borrowed. Not a ripoff or homage. More like this is a thing that happens in the world, in many places, and this movie happened to point a camera at one of them.

Quibbles

Those title cards, which seem to be the house’s voice, flirt uncomfortably close with both pretentiousness and cuteness. The ending edges into manic pixie dream girl territory. She shares an earbud with the house so it can listen to music too, and the credits roll while “they” listen together. A little twee. Also, I did begin to wonder how the police never noticed that every missing person went to the same house with the same realtor. Not a great sign when reality starts to intrude on the film’s world.

Small things I liked anyway: a phone call with her dad (never on camera, but instantly recognizable as Scottish actor Bill Paterson) that captured the awkwardness and repetition of calls with my own dad in college, and a quaintly Scottish atmosphere that makes the whole thing feel older than it is. There’s an assuredness to the choices here that makes it feel like a legacy film.

Verdict

3 stars. It’s a tone poem, not a plot movie. I didn’t follow every crossing storyline and enjoyed the world-building. In the interest of full disclosure, I watched it with some 🌿 onboard, and I’m pretty sure that helped my patience. But if you want something creative that commits to its choices, here it is.

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:27:16 -0400

Finished watching: V/H/S/Mixtape 🍿

This is one of the most tightly produced V/H/S movies, maybe since the early, early ones that really stuck to the cheap VHS look. It’s unusually creative for this series, and hanging everything on a theme of sound and music really benefits it. I enjoyed most of the segments, where in the past I’ve had one or two favorites and the rest were just okay.

“The Music of Mr. Sze” is tremendous. The final segment, with Lydia assembling a last mix in honor of her late dad — written and directed by rapper RZA! — is excellent. Always great to see Barbara Crampton, especially when she’s being awful. The filmmakers ran with this theme in an exciting way. I was really impressed, and I didn’t expect to be.

I can’t quite give it four stars, though, because the visual style, while intensely cohesive across most of the segments, sometimes gets to be a little overindulgent.

Thoughts on finally having watched both 28 Years Later films back to back

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:01:05 -0400

Here there be spoilers, so approach with care. I’m going to try to keep these in chronological order, but this is me, so I may jump around too. I should start off by saying that I love the first film and liked the second.

Oh look, you can write a post-apocalyptic film that isn’t focused on the SA of random women passing by!
Opens with the slaughter of a room full of children! Wow, they went there. Not that I’m in favor of it, but I am in favor of being bold.
Jodie Comer, again, brilliant. What a light in the acting world. Counting the days till she decides it’s time to explore Lady Macbeth.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is one of those actors whom I can never recognize between films. The Movie Database tells me this is the same guy who played the young husband and father in the amazing Nosferatu, but he did not look like the same guy. Tom Hardy was like this for me for years.
The first film has a much more fever-dream quality, maybe intended to align with Isla’s state of mind. Definitely unusual, not sure it totally worked for me. 28 Days Later had a dreamlike look to it sometimes too, but was still rooted in what was actually happening.
The whole story element of Spike deciding to take his extremely ill mother into the heart of the mainland — when he and his experienced hunter father were nearly killed the day before — on the hope that this mythical doctor is still alive and wants to help them, didn’t work for me. I get that you have to get them out of the village and into the action, but… It did pleasantly remind me a little of the quest quality of the novel The Talisman
The giving birth scene. Women helping women even across all this. Very good.
Also add the amazing Jack O’Connell to that list of actors I have trouble recognizing from film to film. I cannot believe he was also Remmick in Sinners!
Ralph Fiennes, half-naked, dragging corpses to his ossuary, and singing “Girls on Film,” wow.
- Tried to think: if this is 2030 and he was a Duran Duran fan, I guess that makes Kelson my age-ish?
The interplay between Samson and Kelson (was the name similarity accidental or meant to show their alignment?), very good. Chi Lewis-Parry gives the impression he’s extremely grateful for the opportunity to stretch his acting chops (and put on some trousers), and he meets the moment.
- “I… I haven’t got a ticket” is an amazing line reading.
Kelson is also a lonely man but committed to it, and hasn’t gone full mad scientist yet. I like that.
The summit between Sir Jimmy and Kelson, so great. Two actually quite intelligent men having a palaver.
Iron Maiden apparently never gives permission for their music to be used in films, but they took a chance here, and we should all appreciate them for it.
The logical conclusion that if Sir Jimmy is Satan’s son, he should be willing to crucify himself is genius, and O’Connell’s whole “oh hey waaaaait a minute” was excellent.
JIM. ❤️
You can learn a lot about the characters by what they have been spending their time doing. Jim and his daughter (where are Hannah and Selena?!) have been collecting books, and learning, and Jim has gone from a young bike messenger to a self-taught history professor. I hate that their happy little world will be shattered in the next film, but I also want to see more of them.
“In the House - In a Heartbeat.” Had no idea how much I needed to hear that.

Movies on Charity Froggenhall

The House Was Not Hungry Then, and Other Houses That Are Not Sane

Thoughts on finally having watched both *28 Years Later* films back to back

Thoughts on finally having watched both 28 Years Later films back to back