Slaughter (2009) directed by Stewart Hopewell This film's big trick is that it teases the audience with the idea that a deranged farmer is killing his daughter Lola's one-night stands, when it's actually Lola doing the murdering. That's fine. It's just that Lola's evil side comes absolutely out of nowhere. I think actress Lucy Holt should've added some quirks to her portrayal of Lola. Just a few minor indications that Lola was not quite right in the head would've helped in the transition from the first 2/3rds of the movie to the final 1/3rd. As it stands, she's pretty much the Krusty the Clown doll from that Simpsons Halloween episode: a switch on her back gets flipped in the middle of the movie from good to evil. The movie attempts to flashback and explain what Lola's ultimate evil plan was, but it doesn't really make much sense when you think about it. Really, everything about the movie comes across as ham-handed and poorly thought out. (4/10)
Du saram-yida (2007) directed by Ki-hwan Oh Voices, like every other East Asian horror movie I've seen lately, just doesn't work for me. I suspect there's a cultural difference at play here. Folks on that side of the Pacific Ocean seem to find ghosts and curses supremely scary subjects. I can't say that I do. I suppose Poltergeist was effective... when I was a kid.
In this one, there's a curse going around that causes people to snap and kill people their own family members or friends. The main character has to survive attacks from her schoolmates, mom and boyfriend before she finally succumbs to the curse herself. The curse, by the way, is personified as a creepy-looking kid. I don't think we're supposed to realize that the main character is the only one who can see and talk to him until the end, but it was pretty obvious to me he was a Tyler Durden right away. The curse is also sometimes shown as a burned-up pair of hands or a face popping into the main characters field of the view suddenly. These shots seem to exist simply to add some traditional horror movie shocks to the film, as they don't appear to have anything to do with anything.
All that aside, the movie is massively boring. Once we learn the curse means you can't trust anyone, it becomes obvious that everyone the main character encounters is going to try to kill her. There's not much tension in a horror film when you know what's coming. (5/10)
And that gets me caught up with three years of Horrorfest movies. Horrorfest III was an improvement over the previous two years. This time around, there were three films -- one more than usual -- that I found decent. The Brøken, The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations and From Within were all worth watching. Hey, at this rate, fully half of Horrorfest V will be enjoyable!
Perkins' 14 (2009) directed by Craig Singer We seem to be going to greater and greater lengths to make non-zombie zombie movies these days, I see. First we had disease as in 28 Days Later and now we've got brainwashed kids hopped up on PCP. Pretty soon we're going to swing back around to where it all began and it'll be voodoo drugs again.
Horrorfest III had been on a pretty good streak lately. I was wondering the next completely crappy movie might show up. The premise behind the film isn't bad. A man kidnaps 14 kids from families in his home town and keeps them drugged and brainwashed for ten years. They escape from his house and start massacring the folks in town, including their own family members. We hardly see any of this, though. The film is so focused on the police officer main character, we're never allowed to see how the town is reacting to this nightmarish invasion. As far as we can tell, the movie should be called Perkins' 3: Feral Children vs. Morons in a Police Station.
Bad acting, bad plotting, a couple of good gore F/X. It's not really worth me thinking about any more than this. (4/10)
After the crappy movie, I decided to read every Halloween (the movie) comic book ever written:
Halloween, Halloween II: The Blackest Eyes, Halloween III: The Devil's Eyes (Chaos, 2000-2001)
Halloween: One Good Scare (halloweencomics.com, 2003)
The Chaos comics attempt to connect the continuities of H6 and H20. It's a noble effort, but Busta Rhymes and H8 kick all of that work in the nuts. Numbers 2-7 were written by Stefan Hutchinson. Man, he's a great horror comic writer who really understands the Halloween universe (he should, he directed a documentary about it). He gets right into the psychology of his protagonists in a manner rarely seen in horror comics. I can't say the same about Greg Mitchell's "White Ghost," which fills in the incredibly important backstory of the ill-fated mechanic Michael Myers obtained his coveralls from (seen in the first movie as a corpse for all of 3 seconds). It's too bad Devil's Due's "restructuring" has seemingly killed their Halloween comic line (it's been a year and still no issue #3 of TFDoLS). I was looking forward to more from Hutchinson.
Dying Breed (2008) directed by Jody Dwyer You know, I don't think I've ever seen Tasmania before. I watched a lot of PBS as a kid, but I don't ever remember seeing any video of this island (I don't think Bugs Bunny cartoons count). More than anything about this movie, I enjoyed seeing a place I've never seen before. It looks to me like Tasmania has a lot in common with the Pacific Northwest. Or, they could've just had some bad weather luck during their filming schedule, I suppose. It's beautiful, anyway.
I've discovered I have a low tolerance for stupidity in horror movies. If a main character makes an obviously idiotic choice -- like one does here by freaking out on the ground and refusing to run when there are crazy people in the area -- I lose all sympathy for them. Sympathy/empathy is the absolute key to a good horror movie. For something to scare or disturb you, you're going to need to empathize with the folks being harmed on screen. Lacking that, you're essentially watching the movie with the mindset of a psychopath, waiting for the morons to be offed.
Watching this, yet another movie about redneck cannibals, I thought of a question I'd like to ask these fictional murderers. Why don't cannibals in horror movies want to cook their food before eating it? Seriously. I'm a carnivore, but I'd never grab a live chicken and start chewing on it. What about all of the diseases people carry around? The main cannibal in this movie eats the lips off of a girl's face. What if he just ate a mouthful of herpes sores? I don't buy that these folks survived a century by eating humans in such a reckless manner... (6/10)
From Within (2008) directed by Phedon Papamichael This is the second evil doppelganger movie of Horrorfest 2008. You know, this monster concept really doesn't work for me. I can't think of anything less scary than myself. If I were to see my evil twin, I think I'd be more apt to ask him questions than to run. Luckily for this movie, the evil doppelganger ghost part isn't terribly important. In fact, I like the way it was handled. Ostensibly, the evil doppelgangers are the result of a black magic spell that makes it look like people are committing suicide. However, they can just as easily be seen as some sort of contagious psychological condition.
The movies pits the population of a heavily Christian town against a family they think (correctly, as it turns out) are causing a wave of suicides through witchcraft. I always dig a good clash of religions movie (The Wicker Man being the king of these). Surprisingly, this is the first time I've ever seen a megachurch in a horror movie. I think the idea of those places is scary. Particularly, the idea of a charasmatic preacher pursuading his flock of thousands to commit evil. Sadly, that's not really what happens in this film.
I also liked the twist ending in this flick. We think that the last of the witch family has committed a noble suicide in order to end the evil spell his brother cast. Instead, it turns out, he was shot by the son of the megachurch's preacher before he was able to kill himself. This ensures that the curse continues and the movie ends with a montage of the post-suicide occupants of the town. It's an almost Carpenterian apocalyptic ending.
Not the greatest horror movie of all time, but I enjoyed it. (7/10)
The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006) directed by John R. Leonetti I had no intention of ever watching this movie. I wasn't terribly impressed with the original, which I thought had a great premise with ham-handed execution. But, Horrorfest 2008 selected part 3 as one of their 8 films, so I pretty much had to catch myself up before getting to that one. Not that this movie has anything to do with the ones before or after it. Which was appreciated; the premise doesn't require that the stories connect, so shoe-horning a reference to Ashton Kutcher would've been distracting and unnecessary.
In this one, a young businessman loses his girlfriend and best friends in a car accident. A year later, he figures out he has the power to jump back into previous parts of his life just by staring at a photo of that time. Naturally, the more he tries to fix the past, the worse things become. The bad stuff that happens when he changes the past isn't quite as ridiculous as in the original. No one is instantly transformed into a crack whore or has all of their limbs amputated here. In fact, things just go mildly wrong for the main character until the end. That coupled with some bland characters and a not-too-interesting plot about a struggling tech company make for a rather unmemorable film. (5/10)
The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (2009) directed by Seth Grossman This is the first movie I've seen made with the help of the new Michigan Film Office. Most of this movie was shot in Detroit. I've always thought the spookily deserted parts of Detroit would make a great location for a horror movie. Anyway, as a Michigan native, I can't help like this one more than I should.
This time, the time jumper is fully aware of his gift and its dangers. He uses it to identify murderers for the police (pretending to be a police psychic), but never tries to prevent the killings himself. All he does is watch. Of course, the temptation to look into his own girlfriend's murder is too strong. Soon enough, he's messing up the timeline and making things much worse by accidentally creating a serial killer.
His attempts to track down this serial killer is pretty engaging. He becomes more obsessed with each time jump. And, since he keeps showing up at the crime scenes in the past, he quickly makes himself the police's number one suspect. I have to say the mystery of all this kept me guessing until the end. The revelation was a little disappointing, sadly. Turns out his sister has the same power and has been using it to kill his girlfriends. Turns out she has an incestuous crush on him ever since he saved her life as child. That all seems to come out of nowhere. If there'd been hints that something wasn't quite kosher in their relationship before this is revealed, it may have been more acceptable. As it is, it seems a little random.
Speaking of the sister, she was driving me nuts the entire movie. I knew I'd seen her recently in another movie, but couldn't place her. Actually, Rachel Miner seems to be the queen of Horrorest. She was in Penny Dreadful in 2006 and Tooth & Nail in 2007. I wonder which Horrorfest movie she'll be in this year?
It's very rare thing for second sequel to be better than the preceding movies, but here it is. (7/10)
Autopsy (2008) directed by Adam Gierasch A group of unlikable 20-somethings end up at a hospital in rural Louisiana. Shockingly, the people at the hospital aren't very nice and all but one of the kids is killed by the end of the movie. Pretty standard stuff done without much style. There's a vague attempt, I noticed, to do some Argento-esque colored lighting, but it's barely there.
A couple of things stood out. I always enjoy the T-1000 in whatever he's in. I buy him as a sort of non-frozen Mr. Freeze, trying to save his wife at the expense of others. Also a stand-out was the death of the main character's boyfriend. For some reason, the T-1000 felt the need to remove all of the man's organs from his chest cavity, suspend them in the air above him and keep them all hooked up with tubes so the man doesn't die. I don't think it would work in real life, but it sure looked cool. Other than that, this was mostly just 84 minutes of my life gone away. (5/10)
The Brøken (2008) directed by Sean Ellis Whilst watching this film, I was completely intrigued. The movie is slow and loathe to reveal any details about its own plot. I was trying to figure out what was going on the entire time and enjoying it; movies without plot hand-holding are rare. At the end, though, we run into the big twist of the film. Now I'm not sure the movie actually makes much sense on reflection.
Turns out that Gina, whom we've been watching the entire movie, is actually one of the evil mirror people. The EMP have been slyly popping out of mirrors to kill and replace their normal duplicates throughout the movie. Gina notices right away when her boyfriend is replaced and is completely freaked out by him. But, why? She's an EMP herself. Shouldn't she know her own kind? More importantly, shouldn't the boyfriend know his own kind and not be such a dick to her? And, why would head trauma from a car accident cause an EMP to think they're a normal person? She's not a normal person and has never been one. And, why was she so freaked out to discover her normal duplicate's dead body? She's an EMP. That's what EMP do, apparently. I don't really understand.
I also don't understand what the EMP are doing in our world. This particular bit of not understanding, however, I like. The film makes no attempt to explain anything about the EMP or why they've decided to come to our world and scowl a lot. The movie is simply focused on one confused EMP. The rest is left deliciously up to the audience's speculation. Not many movies have the balls to leave such large questions hanging like that. I like it. (7/10)
Frontière(s): Unrated Director's Cut (2007) directed by Xavier Gens France takes a whack at the Chain Saw Massacretheme with Frontier(s). I dunno. Maybe it's because this is the third movie this season I've seen involving Achilles tendon trauma, but it all felt rather been-there-done-that to me. However, there's a couple of gore gags near the end of the film that I thought were really cool. One involves Samuel Le Bihan (from Brotherhood of the Wolf!) getting shoved onto a table saw. Best table saw gag ever. Gallons of blood spew into the heroine's face as the blade continues to spin in the body even though the man is dead. The other follows closely and involves a head explosion rivaling that of the one in Scanners. Once the filmmakers take the leash of and start to have fun with things -- rather than trying to shoehorn some kind of political commentary in the film -- the movie starts to pick up. That happens a bit too late to really save the film for me, though. (6/10)
That's it for the Horrorfest 2007 movies. I had just about the same experience with this batch as I did with the ones from 2006. One movie I respect but have no desire to watch again (Borderland / The Abandoned). One movie I thought was cool enough that I'd buy it when I saw it for sale cheap (Mulberry Street / Dark Ride). One that had a lot of promise but ultimately disappointed (The Deaths of Ian Stone / The Tripper). And the rest vary between mediocre and utter crap. It took me a little longer than I wanted to get through this set. I think I'm still going to try to get the Horrorfest 2008 movies done before the end of Halloween this year. It would be nice to be caught for next year. So far in general, I'm doing a fantastic job of catching up on this decade's horror movies that I've missed. For some reason, I haven't been too keen on renting lots of horror in the 00s.
Unearthed (2007) directed by Matthew Leutwyler How did a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie sneak into Horrorfest? Okay, though it has no connection to the Sci-Fi Channel -- er, I'm mean Siffy -- Unearthed would feel right at home next to Mansquito and Lake Placid 2. It has a crappy CGI monster -- who looks like a cross between a xenomorph and an iz -- that terrorizes some pretty people in a remote town. That's pretty much the plot of all those "SyFy" movies. There's a vague attempt at some characterization with the sheriff -- she's a drunk who accidentally shot a little girl -- but everyone else in the film is either fodder for the beast or an exposition spouter (or both). They even cast Charlie Murphy and didn't bother giving him anything cool to do before he was killed off. I knew I was in for a bad flick the first time I checked the elapsed time and only twenty minutes had passed. Outside of a couple of cool gore effects -- Charlie Murphy's split head was kinda neat -- there's absolutely nothing special about this movie. (4/10)
Tooth & Nail (2007) directed by Mark Young I really wanted to like this one. Post-apocalyptic stories are among my favorite. Sadly, the movie kept failing at everything it tried. The cause of the post-apocalypse was unique -- as far as I know -- for these types of movies: our oil ran out. However, this has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the film. The cause could've been a virus, a nuclear war, a meteor or global warming and nothing would've been different. I suspect the director/writer just wanted to be the first to make a film with this particular apocalyptic idea as the back drop.
The movie's really about a gang of cannibals who snatch people one by one from the hospital they're holed up in. That's all fine. Unfortunately, we never get to really know most of the characters who are killed, making their deaths lack any impact at all. Similarly, two of the cannibals are played by the awesome Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones, but they're used far too little. Madsen is killed very early on. Jones runs around the halls chasing a little girl until she locks him in a closet. It's disappointing. The rest of the cannibals are just generic big-guy scary-dudes.
Worst, the movie is really just a re-skinned Aliens. The cannibals are the xenomorphs, chasing people through dark hallways in a hospital that replaces the colony on LV-426. Lead, female cannibal Neon is the queen xenomorph. Mute, teenaged Nova is clearly Newt's clone. Rescuing Nova/Newt from the cannibals/aliens is Dakota, standing in for Ripley. Dakota starts off weak but eventually toughens up to battle the monsters at the end, including spouting a pithy line at Neon/the queen that has the word "bitch" in it. One minor difference here is that Viper/Hicks dies, but the character performs the same function at the end of the film. If you're gonna rip off one of the best sci-fi flicks of all time, you're gonna have to do better than this. (5/10)
Nightmare Man (2006) directed by Rolfe Kanefsky Afterward, I was not at all surprised to discover that the director had lots of experience directing soft core. Though there isn't a lot of nudity in this slasher flick, it just has that skinemax feel to it. The bad acting and the amateurish way it was shot has a lot to do with this feeling. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's not wacky enough to be a fun-bad B-movie. Rather, it's mostly Troma vet Tiffany Shepis making wisecracks whilst chewing scenery. Admittedly it's pretty damned funny to behold the Nightmare Man when he takes possession of a girl wearing only a bra and panties. Something about a demon face on an otherwise normal lingerie-wearing woman is hard to look away from. (6/10)
Mulberry Street (2007) directed by Jim Mickle It's about rat people attacking Manhattan, but I liked it. I think because the characters in the film are so well-drawn, it elevates what could've been a lame 28 Days Later clone. They all feel authentic, with real histories behind them. One small example: as the chaos starts to envelop the apartment building, some yuppie tenants are seen fleeing with bags. "Go back to Connecticut," shouts one of the characters in a thick NY accent. Heh.
I absolutely loved, when Clutch went out to rescue Kay, that he decided just to punch out the rat people he encountered. He's a former boxer. His fists are the weapons he's most comfortable with. Why not? It's a fresh idea. We've seen zombies/the infected being shot, burned, beaten and run over by cars over and over. Punched out: not so much.
Actually, if they'd just dropped the rat people thing, this could've been an even better horror movie. People being bit by rats and turning into rabid, rat-like people... it's hard to take seriously. It's actually such a goofy idea, it kicks you right out of the movie. Just drop the rat part of it entirely: one day, people in Manhattan started to go batshit and no one knew why. That's all you need to get the horror going. (7/10)
Fear Itself: "Community" (2008) directed by Mary Harron Sort of in the same universe as The Stepford Wives and "The Lottery," "Community" is about a HOA from hell. Superman and his wife move into a gated community in the hopes of raising a family there. Not having really read the contact they signed for their house (?), they quickly discover the community has a rather puritan morality code. Rather than pack up and leave, Superman hatches an irrational plan involving sneaking his wife away to a cabin and having a friend's wife pretend to be her to fool the cameras hidden in their house. Of course, they all get caught. Somehow the wife is magically brainwashed to accept the situation, and Superman's legs are cut off as punishment. I dunno. Not much makes sense in this one, but HOA are indeed scary... (6/10)
Fear Itself: "Sacrifice" (2008) directed by Breck Eisner The best one of these so far, which isn't saying much. Criminals take refuge in a very cool 18th century-style fort. Three sisters and their father live there, who've never ventured outside of the fort's walls. Seems their family's been keeping a vampire fed and contained in there for centuries for the good of the rest of the world. Needless to say, the vampires eat some of the criminals and some shit hits the fan with the sisters. There's some nice moments and good acting to help make this an enjoyable episode. (7/10)
Lake Dead (2007) directed by George Bessudo This is one of those movies in which it quickly becomes apparent you're about to lose ninety minutes of your life for no good reason. The protagonists are soap opera-pretty frat boys and sorority girls; just the kind of douchebags you hated in college. The antagonists are inbred (literally) rednecks ripped from every other horror movie ever made. I was hoping everyone might die by the end, perhaps in a thermonuclear explosion. Unluckily for me, they insisted on chasing each other around the same three buildings over and over again until the bad guys were taken care of. (4/10)
After twenty years, I finally did it. Dracula has died by my hand at the end of the original Castlevania. I have no idea how anyone ever did this in the era before save states. My controller would've been through a window long before I got to the second-to-last screen in which a flock of huge bats knock you into bottomless pits over and over. As a kid renting the game, I only ever made it to Frankenstein, where I was promptly killed by that damned jumping Igor bastard. I can't imagine the gallons of tears this game must have generated from '80s children who had parents mean enough to buy it for them. As an adult, I had to make a save state after every successful hit on Dracula. Even then, it took me 30-40 minutes of work. Yeash. Well, on to playing Vampire Killer for the MSX2.
The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007) directed by Dario Piana It started out interesting. Every day Ian Stone is killed by spooky black ghosts, only to be resurrected in a different life immediately afterward. It's kind of the horror version of Groundhog Day. Unfortunately, once the movie has to start explaining the reasons behind all of this, it gets a bit Saturday morning cartoonish. Turns out Ian is actually one of the black ghosts himself. He's actually the most powerful one ever. The other ghosts are killing him in his human form to ensure he doesn't remember that he knows how to permanently kill them, which is supposedly impossible. The ghosts also feed on fear, and are particularly addicted to the fear a human emits before dying. Ian's a friendly ghost, however, and eats the love coming out of his human girlfriend, instead. Ah, the power of love... By the time one of the bad ghosts utters "but it has only just begun" in response to Ian's "it ends here," I'd just about checked out. A disappointing waste of a promising idea. (6/10)
Fear Itself: "Spooked" (2008) directed by Brad Anderson I like Eric Roberts, and he does a stand-up job in this episode, but everything else wasn't terribly good. There's lot of armchair psychoanalyzing going on, courtesy of a haunted house that makes you see your greatest regret in life. Eric Roberts' character had a tragedy in his childhood and that's why he was an abusive cop, etc. It's bit like an out-of-tune Tales from the Crypt story. It just never works. (5/10)
Crazy Eights (2006) directed by James K. Jones The second Horrorfest flick of the season ain't even in the same universe as the first. Told in a tedious J-horror style, this is the tale of six old friends discovering the horrible secret of their past. Unfortunately for the audience, we're already mostly aware of what happened to them as kids. Watching six idiots slowly piece together this mystery is the pretty much the opposite of fun. Granted, the location they find themselves trapped in -- an abandoned hospital of some sort by the look of it -- is quite cool. Watching the gang wander the place aimlessly, piecing together their inexplicably vague memories of their childhoods... not so much. Even as the ghost of their old friend begins to pick them off, things don't really pep up. Someone dies, they wander around the hospital some more, someone else dies, etc. Pepper in some gaping plot holes, bad acting, a complete lack of characters to care about and you've go an awful movie.
With Mrs. K at work, my daughter and I kicked up off the first day of Halloween together. I opened the season by popping in Cartoon Network Halloween: 9 Creepy Cartoon Capers, a compilation DVD I picked up five years ago (three before Lil K was even born). We watched The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "Billy & Mandy's Jacked-Up Halloween" and Johnny Bravo: "Bravo Dooby-Doo" before I decided it was time to unpack the decorations box. Lil K was happy to help at first; I had her Halloween books, last year's costume and last year's Halloween clothes on top. However, after getting her finger painfully stuck in Grolschenstein's mouth (who knew he bit?), she got a little timid. I discovered this year that there are certain decorations I just can't use. The life-sized Jason Vorhees is out. Anything that makes scary sounds: out. I guess she's either too old or too young for the scary stuff this time around.
After the little one was in bed, Mrs. K and I watched the first movie of season. She wanted 28 Days Later, but I convinced her to watch the first movie from Horrorfest 2007 with me. I probably should have read some reviews first...
Borderland (2007) directed by Zev Berman "That was brutal!" said Mrs. K as the end credits rolled. It was quite the kick in the guts, I agreed. Three college-age kids drive into a Mexican bordertown for some fun. There they have the bad luck of crossing paths with a cult that practices human sacrifice by way of torture. It sounds relatively clichéd: according to horror movies, thousands of kids die horrible deaths while on roadtrips to rural/non-American places each year.
Somehow, Borderland did it differently. There's a sense of realism about the movie, though perhaps this is partially from the "this is based on a true story" title card at the beginning. It's shot in a really harsh manner. Both the sun and artificial lights seem to give everything a sharp, yellow edge, like a piece of broken glass. The editing is tight, showing just enough of the horror to horrify and only going just a little bit over the line into gross-out territory. The actors who were tortured by the cult did a disturbingly fantastic job of conveying realistic anguish. Also, Marco Bacuzzi really needs to be in more horror movies. Buried in the story are interesting observations on the nature of violence and the effect of belief in the supernatural on a culture.
"Did you like it?" asked my wife. No, I didn't "like" it. I can't imagine buying this to own; I don't see myself ever watching it again. But, I would say it was well-made and worth the disturbing experience. (8/10)
Amazing Stories: "Mummy Daddy" (1985) directed by William Dear In order to lighten the mood after Borderland, I popped in one of my favorite Amazing Stories episodes. I figured this would be a good one to watch, as my wife is pregnant right now. In it, Harold is playing a mummy for a horror movie being shot on location in the swaps of Louisiana. In the middle of a nighttime shoot, he gets a call that his wife has gone into early labor. Without taking his costume off, he jumps in a car and heads for the hospital. Needless to say, dressed as he is in an area where people really believe in mummies, some hijinx ensue.
This episode is packed with clever writing, callbacks to the old Universal horror movies and plain funny moments. It's been a favorite since I was wee. (9/10) PS: Universal, you can eat me. I just ordered a bootleg set of season 2 of Amazing Stories, since you've not interested in finishing a tiny two-season show on DVD.
Rituales de Sangre: The True Story Behind the Matamoros Cult Killings (2008) After the wife went to bed, I popped the Borderland DVD back in to watch this documentary. It covers the real case that the movie was loosely based on. Essentially, it's deputy sheriff George Gavito describing the investigation, interspersed with camcorder footage taken by his department of the crime scene. It was a bit shocking, in that they freely showed footage of the murder victims been dug out of the ground with shovels and a backhoe. The documentary was also focused mainly on the cold reactions of the perpetrators to their crimes. I would've liked to have seen them put these awful events into some context: how it affected the communities, how it affected Spring Break in Texas in the years that followed, if there were any similar cults believed to still exist, etc. (6/10)
[Finally, the last of the Horrorfest 2006 films. I was not impressed. The films overall were about as bad as Masters of Horror season 2. The only one I can see myself watching again would be Dark Ride(mostly because I liked the setting a lot).]
Wicked Little Things (2006) directed by J.S. Cardone "I'm sick of these ghost movies," said my wife as she got up and left after 15 minutes. I wished I could do the same. You know the drill: pissed off ghosts start killing people. Heroes must do XYZ so they can rest. This time, the ghosts are a Newsies-ish gang of children killed in a mine collapse ninety years ago. They roam the Pennsylvania mountainside, killing and eating people and animals they run into. What they really want, though, is to kill the asshole decedent of the owner of the mine that fell on them.
There's some beautiful countryside with some neat old houses in the movie. The gore effects are pretty good and I suppose seeing children act like the zombies from Night of the Living Dead after downing a fresh kill is fairly boundary-pushing. Other than that, there's nothing to admire here. Mediocre acting, poorly fleshed-out characters and a tedious story made this a chore to sit through. (5/10)
Reincarnation (2005) directed by Takashi Shimizu More ghosts. This time, they're pissed-off about being murdered in a hotel 35 years ago. Somehow, they exist both as ghosts and as humans, reincarnated into unsuspecting bodies. Isn't this a violation of some kind of paranormal law? Can I get a rule book? Also, by some huge coincidence, all of the reincarnated people are hired to work on a movie about the murders. Inevitably, the murders begin to be re-enacted on the set / in the original hotel, with the new bodies morphing into the bodies of the original victims. Blah, blah, blah, the main character finds out she's not the reincarnation of the little girl victim, but the reincarnation of the murderer himself. Cut to: her freaking on the movie set, with everything we've been watching for the past hour being all in her mind. Cut to: an asylum, where the ghosts of the child victims haunt the insane girl. So, it wasn't really in her head, or something. Also, there's a creepy doll.
Moral of the story: it's OK to haunt your murderer, even if he's already died and been reincarnated into the body of an innocent girl. (5/10)
Unrest (2006) directed by Jason Todd Ipson So far, three out of six of these Horrorfest movies have been about vengeful ghosts. I didn't really care for this subgenre before watching these films... now I hate it. You'd think, being finally released from the torment that is life on Earth, the dead would be a little more relaxed. Nope. Do one little thing to their grave or to the body they no longer need and they go on a murdering rampage. Whiney, pissy little things they are, threatening the living until one of us comes up with the idea to rebury their remains.
Setting a horror movie amongst medical students taking a gross anatomy class is always a good starting point. To most folks, the idea of such a class is horrfying enough. Too bad the movie's plot doesn't much require such a setting. They could've danced on the dead lady's grave and had the same things happen, which is that the invisible ghost starts making people commit suicide left-and-right. Still, the setting was a good excuse for the slightly-unbelievable-but-cool scene of two med students swimming in a tank of formaldehyde tank filled with dead bodies. (6/10)
The Munsters: "Love Comes to Mockingbird Heights" (1965) directed by Joseph Pevney Uncle Gilbert looks to have the exact mask used in the Black Lagoon movies, except with -- disturbingly -- the eyes hollowed out. The questions arises, though, whose uncle is he? Lily's in the habit of calling her dad "Grandpa," so it could be that Gilbert's actually her brother and is Eddie's uncle. Which is kinda weird. Dracula had a vampiress daughter -- sure, ok -- and a gillman son? Who the hell was Grandpa messing around with for that? Maybe a mermaid? (7/10)
The Gravedancers (2006) directed by Mike Mendez Asks the all-important question: could the ghosts from Ghostbusters II be scary in a serious film? The answers is: no, not really. They are especially non-frightening the way they are shot in this film. Ghost movies -- serious ones, anyway -- need subtlety in order to work. On the rare occasions where you allow the audience a good look at the ghost, it can't be a brightly lit scene or have long enough shots to see the flaws in the latex mask. Having the hero characters get into a fist-fight with a ghost -- say, the ghost of a middle-aged piano teacher -- is gonna probably come off as silly, too. It might also be a mistake to make the main protagonist, and only survivor of the three people who were haunted, a douchebag. Caring about the characters goes a long way into making the situations they're in scary. A great example of how not to make a ghost film. (5/10)
Penny Dreadful (2006) directed by Richard Brandes The premise isn't bad. A teenage girl is deathly afraid of being inside of cars after a horrific car accident when she was a child. She goes on her first major road trip with her therapist, yadda-yadda-yadda, she's trapped in the car with a psycho killer outside. The killer spends most of the movie coming up with ways to scare her. He plants the corpse of her therapist in the driver's seat, moves the windshield wipers when she's not looking, throws blood all over the windshield, etc. A local wanders by and she begs him for help; he's killed. It's a slasher movie with only two characters, essentially.
The movie lost me during the girl's escape attempt. The killer wedged the car into a stand of trees so that all of the doors and windows were blocked. Inspired by her late therapist, she finally gets up the courage to try to push the car out by putting it into neutral and pushing against a tree trunk with her foot. It starts to work when the killer, of course, pops up and grabs her foot. There's a crunch, she screams, pulls her leg back into the car and discovers her pinky toe has been cut off (complete with CGI-enhanced shot of the mutilated foot). It's kinda like if in Halloween, Michael Myers suddenly sliced off one of Laurie's fingers. The drastic change in tone -- from slasher to torture porn -- was hard to get beyond. Combined with the ending -- which litterally made me say "Boo!" outloud -- and I was quite disappointed with this one. (6/10)
Dark Ride (2006) directed by Craig Singer The setting makes this movie. I love "dark rides" -- I'd called them haunted rides -- from carnivals. Take an average slasher and dump it into one of these things: fun. This one certainly owes a lot to the excellent 1981 Tobe Hooper slasher The Funhouse, which has the same basic plot: kids sneak into a haunted ride at night and discover that a disfigured maniac lives inside. Throw in a horny hitchhiker, some magic mushrooms and a plot twist or two and it's different enough. A bit slow to get going, but a good slasher flick. (7/10)
The Munsters: "Country Club Munsters" (1965) directed by Joseph Pevney Woo-hoo, back to The Munsters after a year. The Munsters win a membership to a country club. Little do the country club owners know, eh? Fun ensues as Herman completely trashes the golf course (accidentally, of course) and Lilly and Grandpa offend the blue bloods inside. Did women in '60s country clubs really prance around from table to table showing off their new dresses and announcing its cost? (7/10)
Chronocinethon. That's my made-up name for watching the films of a favorite director, or movie personality, in chronological order. This gives me a sense of where they came from, where they went, how much or little they grew, and whether it was worth buying their worst film (I own Intolerable Cruelty?). Guest reviews and other movie-related posts will also show up here.
