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Guilliermo Del Toro might be a cult filmmaker now with the Pan’s Labirynth but apparently a while ago he was also doing pretty good flicks. Well for an action horror that is. Sure it’s typical, predictable and the action scenes are mostly special effects and not real fighting. But at the same time it has more atmosphere (especially the russian locations) and clever ideas. Like one of the first fights Blade had in front of a “light wall” that looked like a computer game. For a few parts like that it’s worth the watch. Sure it’s not scary and it has more humor than dark elements. But that’s beside the point here. Blade was never supposed to be scary.

The story is again simple – since hollywood writers wrote it (hehe) – a new, powerful enemy comes to light , a sort-of vampire with a very wide jaw that kills other vampires (well and humans too). So the vampire clans comes to Blade to just this one time unite agains the common enemy. Sure there are plot twists here and there but it’s pretty simple nonetheless. The action is there. That’s all it maters in that kind of movie. Too bad they spoil it all with a failed romance story. But the ending (the very ending) was hilarious

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Yeah, action horrors are not really horrors in a true sense. Mostly because the good guys don’t have much to fear in them and they’re equipped well enough to fight their way through any obstacly and/or horror. So those movies are using horror elements lik in this case – vampires – and putting them into an action/shooting/explosions kind of set.
Sometimes they’re terrible, sometimes they’re good in their genre. But they’re rarely scary. That of course can’t really be the single reason not to enjoy them so we do. Things like Blade (a classic right now), Resident evil, Underworld and more recently Daybreakers are exactly that kind of movies.

Blade is a black vampire that has decided to help the humans and kill other vampires. He injects himself with some serum that stops his bloodthirst and sort of makes him human. We have a lot of cliches here like vampires burning on death, garlic and plenty of matrix style fighting on strings. Plus some ninja stuff. Sure it’s not clever or anything. It’s not scary. It’s an action packed, horror themed hollywood movie that is fun to watch … once. And then forget about it. But it defined a lot of what followed in the action-horror genre. And for that thumbs up.

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Classics can sometimes come back, and most people trying to be classics fail miserably. Martin Scorcese is not one of them thankfuly. He has made a huge impact on the movie industry and he’s amazing in choosing and directing the cast. Yeah, the acting in this one is top notch. Not only – as many say – by Leonardo DiCaprio, who of course did great (but I always thought that Titanic was only an iceberg on his way) but all of the actors did a great job here. All were convincing and created real characters. It reminded me of the Shining (Kubrick’s version) a little bit in terms of the acting (especially at the arrival when there were a lot of people at the Overlook hotel).

So great acting, great directing, what else is here? A really nice story about two US marshals on an investigation in a mental hospital in the 50′s and this movie even smells like the 50′s. It has the same atmosphere as the future 50′s we know and love in the fallout games. Music, people, accents, atmosphere. It all just works seamlessly as a movie that can become a modern classic. Sure it’s a thriller and not really a horror, but it has some moments that can be quite terrifying, and the brilliance of acting and directing here makes it really happen.

A good mix!

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Here’s a Polish attempt at a horror film, that would roughly translate as “time of the darkness” or something close to that. The dvd cover and the posters all look pretty promising but unfortunately the graphic designers that did them weren’t responsible for the rest of the movie which is simply dull. Plot for you : a bunch of teens (yeah they’re the same everywhere apparently) come back to an old factory in which a year ago a brother of one of the girls disappeared. So it’s sort of a search mission (why a year later?) but mostly a way to have sex, drink and have fun. Or whatever.
At the same time in a mental institution (how clever!) nearby some troubled kids arrive that want to break out of there. Of course they all meat at some point, but the real villains are of course Nazi’s. Or at least post-nazi doctors that do some evil experiments in the basements of the place. The main problem with this movie is that they try to be as weird as possible in nearly every scene. The forced mystery makes it pretty hard to watch sometimes, especially when you realize it’s a bunch of cliches and not-too-scary elements that visually stand very far from the posters and dvd cover. Too bad, it had potential but went the wrong way somewhere, making it more funny than clever and more pathetic than scary. Watch if you really have to.

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Ok here are some brits making a horror film. It’s following a couple of cliches and in few places trying hard to impress the viewer unfortunately they fail miserably. The only fun part is the beginning, reminding me a bit of the oldschool american horrors. It’s really cool, but then it all goes down the drain.

I mean seriously – the acting is terrible, why those people? Why? Sure having rich, city people in a house in the middle of nowhere stalked by a killer could be a nice back story for a decent film. So why didn’t it work? Well for starters there’s too much screaming and crying, and not only on the girlie side here. They all behave like a bunch of sissies, and sure, what would I do when stalked by a killer? I’d probably be really afraid at first too, but then at some point I’d get pissed and grab something to hit him with. And that wouldn’t be a spoon. Seriously.

Too bad for the brits, cause the cut is like the one you sometimes have while shaving – put something over it and forget about it. The good and creative thing about it is that it was shot in one take. Perhaps that’s also the reason for all the flaws, but nonetheless that is in fact impressive, even with a not so great outcome.

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So another teen movie, based in a small town. Of course there’s a couple there, a loner, an artist chick and a skateboarding dude. That must mean that there’s trouble coming their way, as a “dangerous killer” comes back each year on 4th of july to kill the naughty teenagers. I’d say : do it man! Get rid of ‘em from our screens and from our horror movies. This is just so cliche and teen-horror that it makes you puke some black goo out of your every orifice. Seriously, I don’t know how much acid the crew took last summer, but it seems that it was too much. Skip it. Seriously. It’s not even good in it’s genre (teen american horrors) and that’s something that should drive you far far away.

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This movie is almost as cool as the main bad guy here. Seriously. Vinnie Jones also did some sports before he started acting, playing mostly BIG+BAD guys in scary movies. But his sports career was also pretty funny. He played soccer apparently, and is famous as the holder for the guiness record for the fastest penalty in a game. Game started, 3 seconds into it he attacked one of his opponents. But for a role like this he’s simply perfect.

So the movie is a gore fest with a back story by Clive Barker, which would lead to an assumption that it’s something better in the story department. Unfortunately the screwed it up a bit at the very end, but for most part the story is pretty good. An aspiring young (well sort of) photographer starts to become more and more famous when he focuses on the darker elements of human nature. Which in new york would be probably anything. But he opens up a bit to the possibilities that brings him and starts walking with his camera at night. When he sees a young woman being murdered inside an underground train he decides to follow on that story, and on the weird, big, big man that was on the same train with the woman. He discovers some crazy stuff about that man, and basically from then on it’s a gore-fest.

Blood spilling over everything. Eyeballs popping out. Stuff that normally would be disgusting in movies like “Hostel” here just works. Probably because for some parts it’s just funny, the context of the killings plus the bad guy himself. It all just works for an entertaining gore movie. Too bad the story turns to garbage at the end, but hey, it’s still not so bad.

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This is another movie by George A. Romero that is almost an instant zombie classic. I mean come on, the man is a zombie god, that pretty much invented that horror genre and made it all goo’y and exciting! He deserves credit. And after his good attempt called “Diary of the dead” he comes back with another horror that follows on the same story. Yeah, I’m serious, even some of the same characters are there , plus the cast of the former movie appears for a minute at the beginning of this one. So this is almost like a side-story of the first movie, but at the same time, this is done even better than it’s predecessor.

First of all : this is a zombie film that’s a mix of action and sort-of dark-comedy. So it’s not supposed to be “really scary” and it’s not supposed to be a horror’y type. This is more like a zombie comedy with some drama in the back (which is the weakest link here anyway) just to tie it all together. Basically Romero shows that the zombie subject is a lot of fun and he knows how to make a movie that shouts that out loud. It’s not pretentious. It’s not modern hollywood. It’s not many things. What it is, is a really funny horror comedy, with those VERY, VERY SLOW zombies walking around making stupid faces. Oh and by the way there’s even a MAC vs PC debate in this movie, of course in favor of the mac. Funny stuff! In the zombie genre it’s either the new stuff like the nazi zombies of nordic filmmakers, or the zombie comedies like this one and zombieland. Both do a really good job. Good movie.

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Ok, people are running out of ideas and thus making remakes of old movies that were at least a mild success. That’s understandable. And actually sometimes it’s for the better to re-do some cool idea with all the modern technology available and make it more natural, more scary, more … expensive ;p Crazies is a movie from the 70′s and it had it’s moments back then, especially due to all that fear of missiles, war etc. For it’s time it was done pretty well too, but watching it now it’s easy to notice where the effects get cheesy and unconvincing. But hey, it was the 70′s. And the modern day crazies are just as crazy, with all the CGI departments doing their job. While in the 70′s there were no CGI departments at all. Well anyway…

The story is pretty much the same. A military super-top-secret zombify-virus falls down from the sky in a plane crash and poisons the towns water supply. From then on it’s who lives close to the crash turns into a zombie first, so it’s not a mass zombie attack at first. No, it starts slow but picks up the pace when the military guys show up and that’s pretty much when the action starts.
One thing worth mentioning, the zombies are not brainless as they usually are, nor they are slow. Nope, here they’re a mix between a zombie and a human. Still thirsty for blood, killing and aggressive behavior, but at the same time pretty capable of more complex things like operating a gun, a car, and in some cases even talking. That’s a nice twist on the zombies. Yay!
The acting? As good as you could hope for in a movie like this. But seriously it’s not about the acting, it’s more about the plot and the few nicely done moments (like the cafe scenes at the end) plus an idea of a biological weapon is not that unfamiliar now is it ? Saddam supposedly had those too, well there was no proof, but here we have proof that the american army has them. So should someone invade the states? Nah. Why bother, the zombies will suffice. Not a bad movie though. Pretty standard for a horror, but that’s not a bad thing.

Rec VS Quarantine 4:1

Acting

Rec wins here completely. The characters are more “real” and less known to us – the viewers than the sister of Dexter from that one hit show. Also the firemen are much better in the original version. So Rec 1, Quarantine 0.

Locations

Actually despite the fact that Rec is in Barcelona and Quarantine is of course in LA, the location design is pretty much the same – which is really good. Rec : 1, Quarantine 1.

Zombies

Quarantine had the americanized, not too disturbing zombies. While Rec had them much more “demonic” and aggressive, and yet still distinguishably human. Thus Rec : 1, Quarantine : 0.

Scary moments

Rec had an awesome atmosphere that was amazingly intense and at the same time that sinister feeling only a few horrors have was there nearly from the start. Quarantine was just a typical american zombie movie. Rec : 1, Quarantine : 0.