Rating:

Ok here’s the deal. Take some great actors like Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Benicio Del Toro, then make a 2010 horror film. It has to be high budget for those actors alone, so it has to be done very money-oriented if you know what I mean. Using all the safe ideas and elements that will for sure SELL. Especially since this is a studio produced movie, where they apparently made a lot of changes during the production to make it more appealing to a wider audience. But enough money talk.

What starts as a 19th century England warewolf tale at first turns out to be pretty interesting in the end. Sure the Gwen character is just a background for great acting by the leading trio, but overall the whole cast did a very good job at being convincing. The story itself at first seems to go into a typical blockbuster direction but then we have some nice twists (some expected, some not) and an ending that really works. Also the CGI here is not really overdone, and the transformations look great. The warewolves themselves are a bit “funny” when they have a face-closeup but for most of the movie they’re just fast creatures that don’t really have time to face-act. Which is good.

So money can actually sometimes lead to something quite good. That was unexpected, especially knowing how I rant about the studio fat cats being unimaginative jerks that just want to make money with the least effort. This time might’ve been the same but for some odd reason it all just works together. Not a deep thing, but a well made horror film ad. 2010. Which is a rare thing… The silver bullets are flying, the acting is great, the story quite unconventional. Sure, go and see it.

Rating:

There’s not much reasoning behind the plot here. Ten years ago some kids pull a prank on a younger kid that ends up getting him killed (drowned to be precise) and even though it had nothing to do with the supernatural, the supernatural turns out to be real. Because you know, small towns have their mythical monsters. So this town has the Mothman – a weird creature with glowing eyes that likes to kill people. Haven’t we’ve seen that before? I mean come on! This movie is lacking everything, there’s no acting to talk about, no atmosphere, a more funny than scary villain. Seriously this should go into the $1 bin in the supermarket alongside the Boogeyman series. Don’t waste your time people!

1984 Rating:

The original Freddy kept me awake for at least a week. And that wasn’t even the worst part because being awake as a little kid back then made me even more scared that freddy will pull me into the bed and there will be blood everywhere. The original movie was also a trendsetter for the genre with such memorable scenes as the one with a body bag in the school halls. And it introduced to the world a little known child actor called Johnny Depp who later played in some other movies which made them famous or something It also defined the career of one Robert Englund who became Freddy in many, many movies to come. Sure it was grotesque and the special effects were far from great but come on, it was 1984!

2010 Rating:

So what are we facing now? Well the studios in Hollywood are unimaginative pricks and they don’t have any original ideas. So what do those fat cats say at their meetings? Well, let’s do an american version of a Spanish horror film! Yeah, let’s! Any other ideas? Let’s combine some characters from different movies and call it a “vs”! Great idea Bob!
Oh! Oh! I have an idea! Let’s remake Nightmare on Elm Street! Whoa! That’s an awesome plan.

And there might be one little guy somewhere there saying “Hey, Boss, maybe let’s look for some original ideas to surprise the audience with something fresh and new?” And I’m sure their response to that is “You’re fired Jim!”.

Greedy bastards. The worst thing about it is the fact that over half of the remakes don’t even come close to the original (sure some are better like “The last house on the left”) and it kills the legend in the eyes of many fans. Remember how Lucas and Spielberg raped Indiana Jones? Yeah, exactly. But let’s get back to the movies, shall we?

If you haven’t seen the original yet you can’t really be called a horror fan because this movies IS horror. It is a prime example of the genre and thus should be watched. Period. Ok, let’s start.

The remake pretends to have an original story (that’s slightly different at times and “reveals more depth” in the character of Freddy) but the story uses nearly all the same scenes as the original such as : Bathtub scene, Famous corridor scene with the body bag, death in a jail cell and many, many more. Oh and the theme song sang by little girls here is too polished and it lacks the atmosphere of the original where the girls were often out of rhythm and that made it more spine chilling as a result.

So yeah, the movies have a similar story – some parents killed a child molester / killer and he comes back in their children’s dreams. But if you die in a dream you die in reality, and usually in a gruesome way. So the kids try not to sleep, or to pull Freddy over from the dream world to the real world and kill him there.
The acting in the original was “weird” but not overdone in any way.
The remake features some kids trying to be all “prime actors” and doing their best to overdue every scene like it was Sheakspeare. The special effects are better, of course, but the original even now makes you uneasy (if not scared) while the remake is “just another teen movie” – with Freddy played by another actor now we can sum it up with a big and loud : IT’S NOT THE SAME!

Rating:

A bunch of swedes pretending to be americans are being hunted down by a bunch of swedes pretending to be gay-cannibal-monster-killers out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. Pretty standard setting for a slasher flick but it doesn’t quite live up to the standards of the first “The Hills have eyes” movie. The acting is surprisingly good but only on the emotional side. All dialogues are carried out with an odd accent and the script sucks big time. I mean come on how many people talk like that? It’s not realistic at all in that matter.

There’s some gore and some disgusting elements but the camera angles in a way that it doesn’t hurt the eyes. With better dialogue it’d be much better. I see a lot of people dissing this movie because it looks so low budget. But I think they actually took the low budget approach to their advantage with this one. Mainly because it’s very realistic. Fights don’t look like everyone knows karate. Not every thrown knife reaches the target. People get hurt from even falling down on some tree branches and jumping out of a moving car can render a person unconscious for a few minutes. No superhero stuff like some american teens pull every now and then when they graduate with a killer around. It’s a different approach and if not for the dialogue it’d be pretty standard. A lot better than american teen movies. And if you look past the dialogue it can be pretty entertaining.

Rating:

After a pretty funny (but in a good way) “Creep” here comes a classical horror comedy with a bit of slasher elements and Danny Dyer (Moff in Human Traffic / Tommy in Football Factory) as one of the main characters here, again delivering a good mix of drugged / funny / confused. And hilarious to watch. The plot is pretty simple, a nice, law abiding company that sells weapons (which kill people ) sends their employees on a team building trip somewhere in southeastern europe. They travel to the middle of nowhere just to find out that there are some customers of their company in the woods, who aren’t satisfied with the quality. So they hunt the employees down, kill them, torture them. All that hostel’y fun stuff. But the reason this one is fun to watch is the comedic parts of it like two “escort” ladies trying to get out of a hole in the ground strip down completely and tie their clothes together to form a rope. There’s a lot of elements in this movie that are simply hilarious. It’s not “for real” and it’s not supposed to be scary really. You’ll see severed heads coming to some realisations here, a guy without a foot being fed ecstasy and loving everyone as a result and a classic yet memorable sentence :

Before the war the movies were silent and the women even quieter

If you like comedy horrors that are only a little bit serious check this one out. If you’re a football fan you’ve probably watched every Danny Dyer movie anyway.

Rating:

Whoa! There’s a boogeyman under my bed. And in my closet. Wait! I don’t have a closet and I sleep on a mattress. So where is he gonna hide? Oooh right, he’s a part of my imagination and if I believe in him then he’ll appear and kill me. Right. So following that logic – I don’t believe in this movie! It doesn’t exist! It doesn’t exist! I didn’t watch it! Or I am cursed forever. Teens had graduated (finally!) and turned into college students which makes it all the more boring and stereotype driven. So sure there’s a fraternity pledge, there are some smart and caring students and there are some non believers who also get killed by the boogeyman. La di dah!

If you want horror, look elsewhere.
If you want “scary” then turn the lights out and crawl under your bed, but watching this will only spoil the mood. What a terrible, full of cliches waste of time. Skip it, allright?

Rating:

Here’s a British attempt at a horror / thriller / slasher movie, based in the UK and well it’s tough to decide about this one. On one hand it’s pretty good, very brutal but naturalistic, and the fear, anger, many emotions are there. There’s the good acting, especially from the main female character. And the evil teenagers are also pretty good, showing all sorts of personalities, with the leader being of course the catalyst for all the destruction. So what’s wrong with it? Well the most disturbing part is the fact that things like that can happen when angry teens with nothing to do suddenly find something to do. Like stabbing people. And torturing them for no reason. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just disturbing because it’s not some sort of unreal, out of this world story. This could happen to any one of us.

So a couple decides to spend a weekend at the lake, with Steve planning to pop the question and all that romantic stuff. His girlfriend, an overly nice preschool teacher comes along not knowing that he has the ring, thinking it’s just a regular weekend. While at the lake they’re confronted by a bunch of teenagers who steal their stuff and then in a bad turn of events end up hunting the couple in the woods. Since the lake is supposedly in the middle of nowhere, and they don’t know the way to the nearest town, it’s not as easy to escape.

It left me disturbed, especially the ending. I’ve met families like that. I see people like that on the streets of London sometimes. And on the other hand, despite all the odds – a big, muscular strong man should’ve had a better chance against a bunch of kids. If he fought them at the right time instead of running all would’ve probably turned out differently. But most people don’t fight, that’s also very real. Go watch it and watch your back next time you’re out camping. This one stays with you.

Rating:

Now that’s stupid. Giving the Columbine type guys some new ideas on how to get back at the high school jocks? Don’t they have enough? I mean come on, this is like the dumbest idea ever, because sure – every nerd secretly wished to have a nice bloody revenge, but people get over it and usually those nerds become stronger later in life. So here we have a “typical” high school setting – a bunch of nerds gets harassed constantly by a group of cool, popular kids. So the nerds make up a party without revealing the host of course, get all the cool kids there, drug them and then comes the torture. I can’t say that I’ve found anything really good about this movie, the acting is “american-teen” type, maybe except for the black guy who does a really good job. Oh and dressing the nerds in nazi costumes – that’s all cool and nice for those lost, emotional artistic souls. Pfffff.

Generally this is boring, overdone in terms of trying to be another hostel and quite frankly I think that it might give some people some ideas. Because it kinda shows you the whole plan right there, and most of the “gear” can be obtained online. If it happens for real then the movie will probably get more publicity, right? Skip it.