Movie: Innkeepers

January 24th, 2012


Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Yaaaawn. Sometimes it’s nice to watch a low-profile, barely known movie because it can lead to a great discovery (Grave Encounters for starters) but this time we definitely have a miss. The cheezy special effects are not even the worst part here, because they’re not that important. But nearly everything else here is utterly hopeless.

Even the story itself is pretty awkward with one of the main characters being lost (in fact it looked more like the actor was lost in what he was about to do). It all falls apart and I think old 60′s horrors were much less crappy than this one. Seriously. If you stumble upon this piece somewhere remember to skip it.

It’s almost like a 60′s movie done quite recently with a little budget and cutting corners everywhere. They aimed for “the shining” atmosphere in some scenes (like the old actress etc) but unfortunately it’s a failed effort :(

Movie: Don’t be Afraid of the Dark

January 4th, 2012


Rating: ★★★½☆

Don’t be afraid of the dark was a little bit surprising. I wasn’t expecting a well executed thing from that, especially after the cheesy trailer. But all in all it’s a pretty good movie, original in the fact that rarely “the monsters from under the bed” are small and strong in numbers. It’s a nice change from one big-bad-guy trying to kill everyone. And the acting is pretty good too. There aren’t many scary moments, just a few loud-noise jumps here and there, but there’s some tension, some mood, and an atmosphere. Nice going! Definitely worth a watch which means a lot in this world of crappy remakes! The story is believable, although without many twists. One of the main characters (the father) seems almost completely unnecessary, but the rest of the cast did the job well. Fun!

Movie: 11-11-11

December 23rd, 2011

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Darren Lynn Bousman is a well known name in horror (and thriller) genre, so I was a little excited to learn there is a new movie coming and it’s about the 11-11-11 date that we witnessed (and survived) a couple weeks ago. I was always a fan of 11 as a number, and that date was something special alright.

The movie tries to tell us that there’s a secret cult of “eleveners” who believe that the world will end on that day, and they’re very secretive. In fact so much, that our main protagonist can easily find their videos on youtube’ish equivalent they used in the film. So we have a guy here, that’s a writer and his family’s dead, so he’s detached, sad and depression driven. He has a preacher family living in spain in a house that will become haunted or evil or something. It’s not quite clear until the very end, and the plot can be a bit boring at times, but all in all the movie’s not bad. Not great considering the potential of “eleven”, but not bad. If you’re a fan of Darren go watch it. If you want a scary movie go watch Insidious or something and quit bugging me ;)

Movie: Event Horizon

December 19th, 2011


Rating: ★★★½☆

So here’s an original piece of film. Let’s try and guess what it is: A small space crew is traveling on a rescue mission (for a long lost spaceship that started transmitting distress messages). Then they land and there’s nobody there. And they figure out after a while it wasn’t a cry for help but a warning. Sounds familiar? Is the first Alien movie rolling in his space grave right about now?

So that’s pretty much the plot for Event Horizon, except there are no flesh eating aliens here, but some other evil things. The similarities of the base plot are striking, but oddly enough this movie is actually pretty good. The way the story unfolds from the copycat base is pretty interesting, the acting is good enough for a space-horror, and there are even some nicely done “scary” elements here. It’s even more weird when you look at the director, because this is a little bit of a classic right now, and Paul W.S. Anderson isn’t really known for good movies.

It’s something worth seeing if you’re not put off by a little gore near the ending. There’s definitely something here, even if it’s just controversy. Some people love it, some hate it. At least it produces strong opinions right?

Movie: The Thing (2011)

December 14th, 2011


Rating: ★★★☆☆

What happens when filmmakers run out of ideas? Yeah, that scenario that happens over and over again. But they do have a magic trick they can pull, because the movie making machinery can’t stop, right? So they look at what classic movie from 10-20-30 years ago can they re-do in a more modern fashion and make big bucks. Apparently writers were more creative pre-internet than now. It sucks but what can I do abuot it? Complain I guess, but that’s what I’m doing already so yeah. The Thing! One of THOSE films with great atmosphere, tension, scary, well acted and considering the production date (1982) amazingly good visually. So now we have a sort of Prequel to The Thing, and how does it stack up against the cult classic?

As a matter of fact not bad. Or at least not terrible. It doesn’t have the same level of acting and tension, but some characters are actually believable. The problem with it is that mostly the Norwegian guys seem to be right for the film, while all the American cast is as stiff as a Keanu Reeves reinacting the Matrix in Starbucks. But at least the Wikings deliver! There’s of course plenty more CGI here too, with weird morphing, evil creature kinda reminding me of the “Akira” movie. It’s gross at times, but I guess it had to be visible or the people would find a movie with no “creatures” boring if it only had “tension” and “fear”. Good thing is that they don’t overexplain anything here, so we won’t be stuck with knowing it was just an American experiment with bio-weapons or something. Nah, it stays plain and mysterious, at least another “The Thing” thing.

Good thing about the Thing is that it does it’s own thing well enough, and even has a little nod towards the 1982 movie, with the ending explaining the beginning scenes of it. And for that I give it one star more than the “2″ that I was going to rate it at. Worth a watch, but NOT unless you’ve seen the original, because the original is still better in every way.

Movie: Paranormal Activity 3

December 12th, 2011


Rating: ★★★☆☆

Not as bad as the second one, and almost as good as the first one
The first Paranormal Activity was a huge success, merging a camera-based blair-witch-like atmosphere with an in-house-ghost story. The studio soon realized that it “needs” a sequel, and the second part was created that didn’t really bring anything new to the mix, and it’s general mood and execution was lacking. Now we have the third part, and it still doesn’t bring anything new, but this time it’s done with a lot more attention to detail, and some parts can be called “quite” creative too.

Knowing how the first two parts ended making another sequel would’ve been pretty stupid, so as usual with such cases they decided to make a prequel. We go back to 1988, with it’s cheesy beta cameras, interlaced images and weird hairstyles. The girls would later become famous for being in movies (paranormal 1 and 2), but right now they’re just kids talking to their imaginary friends.

So is it a witch covent? Is it the devil? Is it casper the friendly ghost? Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? Nah, probably just a pizza delivery guy, but this still works as a somewhat scary movie, and judging by it’s gross revenue people like ghost stories if they don’t happen to them.
I’ve seen better.

Movie: Panic at rock island

December 10th, 2011

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Panic at Rock island is one of those rare movies about a virus killing a bunch of people, that's not really a horror, but we can assume it is for the sake of this review.

The story revolves around a rock festival in Australia, that’s supposedly a super big event over there that everyone wants to attend. There’s just one problem here though. The size of the stage suggests it’s not really big at all. There are maybe three bands playing, and the number of people there is also not quite convincing. Apparently the budget wasn’t high enough for more extras and a bigger stage. Well it doesn’t really matter if the movie is good, right? We can overlook some things, can’t we?

Well that’s not completely the case, as this movie is not something you’ll remember, but for a one time watch with a few beers and chips it might do the trick. Especially if you got nachos with some spicy dips it’ll do fine given all the vomit that we witness onscreen. The plot isn’t really original, with the deadly military virus outbreak and everything, but at least it’s not about vampires, right?

Movie: Red State

November 28th, 2011


Rating: ★★★★½

Religion has been a good part of the scary-movie genre for a while now, because it's something that we know and grew up around, so twisting it a little bit and showing a scary side can be more effective. But this movie is not about the devil, or the wrath of God. It’s about religious fanatics resembling the sect of Westboro if they had an incline towards guns. And since both silly religious compounds (Waco anyone?) and guns are so all-american, this movie sums up what’s right and wrong with some parts of the country.

Did you know that Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs got banned in the states, deemed dangerous? Yet guns are allowed and nobody sees any problem with that. It’s almost like the recent shitty declaration of pizza as a vegetable because it has tomato sauce on it. So battling that mentality is something Kevin Smith decided to do, and he did it extremely well. His recent movies were a little less original than “Clerks”, but here he comes back with style. This is an awesome movie, with everything done just right, and with amazing acting performances by pretty much the whole crew. Not a horror but I do recommend it!

Movie: Hellraiser – Revelations

November 26th, 2011


Rating: ★½☆☆☆

If Clive Barker had any idea what's going to become of the new hellraiser movie he'd probably put a bunch of nails in his own head too. Sorry ladies and gentlemen – we have another classic rape of a classic. It’s lost ALL of the mysticism, all of the tension and all of those dark, moody scenes we know from previous ones. Now it’s all there for you to see – gore, blood, nails in the head – all perfectly lit, because that’s apparently what people want. Yuck!

Any tries to establish the characters fail right at the very beginning. I mean come on, 99% of the time the characters behave completely without any logic, and it shows. I’m not making this up people! Whoever wrote that script was probably high and drunk, watching bugs bunny re-runs at 4 a.m.

This is not a hellraiser movie. This is another bunch of uncreative people trying to jump on the back of a popular horror series, but as usual they fail miserably. The plot is nearly non-existent (if you can count two spoiled teens running away from home as a plot), the acting can be compared to the first toy story (and the toys were really made of wood and plastic!), and there’s no tension, no suspense, no horror. Just another teen movie that you’ll forget 5 minutes after watching.

Skip it and go watch previous parts of Hellraiser.

Movie: Final Destination 5

November 23rd, 2011


Rating: ★½☆☆☆

How much longer with this? I mean come on - the first one was something new. The second one was a little too obvious, and the rest we should just skip completely. They were high-budget failures and a proof that milking the same cow over and over again doesn’t always end up with great results. (or does it ever?). Now more unimaginative filmmakers decided to do it one more time for old times sake. So the team in suits (and converse sneakers – they’re hip now you know), the creative directors sat down and thought about how to make some money again but without too much effort. There was one of those guys, probably an intern who was there to make coffee, that shouted ONE a little bit creative idea that made it in. Yes, the ending here is not bad, but ONE creative twist and idea for a 90 minute movie is a little poor, don’t you think?

The good thing about the first part of this series was that the deaths weren’t as gruesome as they’re made to be now. It was more subtle, more focused on the mood and the impending doom. Here the tension is sucked out by pretentious humor and gore. It’s gone completely and it sucks. So should we expect another part of the series next year? Most definitely. Will it suck? Probably. But hey, you have me to tell you it does before you go lose your money to see it yourself.

This you skip. Seriously.

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