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Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Movie: The Children

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Rating:

Wasn’t expecting much from this movie, so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized it doesn’t suck. In fact it’s a pretty entertaining horror film and a breath of fresh air, cause children are rarely that evil (well maybe if they’re children of the corn ) Basically we have a scenario we all know and hate, a family vacation, around the new years eve, with lots of little kids running around in the snow. And there is a killer in the woods… Errm wrong movie. Nah, apparently the kids are evil, or become evil – that’s not completely explained but doesn’t hurt the plot. Maybe it’s even for the better, cause overexplained plotlines have a tendency to dive into absurd. Here we have a perfect family outing, with something going horribly wrong somewhere along the line.

And a movie like that could also work as a condom advertisement – “if you don’t make ‘em, they won’t kill you” But seriously, worth a watch.

Posted in Family, Horror, Psychological, Thriller | No Comments »

Movie: Don’t be Afraid of the Dark

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Rating:

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!

Posted in Family, Haunted house | No Comments »

Movie: 11-11-11

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Rating:

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

Posted in Curse, Family, Psychological | No Comments »

Movie: Paranormal Activity 3

Monday, 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.

Posted in Curse, Family, Ghosts, Psychological | No Comments »

Movie: Panic at rock island

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Rating:

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?

Posted in City, Family, Indie, Thriller, Virus | No Comments »

Movie: Red State

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Rating:

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!

Posted in Family, Thriller | No Comments »

Movie: Hellraiser – Revelations

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Rating:

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.

Posted in Classic, Curse, Family, Gore, Horror, Torture | No Comments »

Movie: Exorcismus – the possession of Emma Evans

Monday, October 31st, 2011

Rating:

It seems the devil is back, after the last few dreadful "vampire years". We had the new Omen recently, a pretty good “Devil” movie, Religious from top to bottom REC2, and the awesome “The Last Exorcism”. So if people started liking exorcisms, priests and posessed little girls, why shouldn’t everyone jump on that wagon? And some more people did with the poor Emma Evans being posessed because she played with the ouija board, and sort of brought it on herself. Boo hoo!

So we had the last exorcism, the Emily Rose one, and now Emma Evans is in the house, playing FIFA on Xbox and being all posessed and sad at the same time. Too bad it doesn’t quite work because compared to “The Last Exorcism” this movie doesn’t win in ANY category. It’s simple, not scary, oddly written and the characters seem a lot out of place. It reminds me at times of Sy-Fy productions, just not the better ones. The acting is so-so, and the thing as a whole leaves the viewer impression-less. Nothing stands out in this movie – it’s just a horror flick about a possessed girl – nothing more, nothing less. If you’ve seen all the other recent Exorcism movies, then maybe you should check it out. But if you want a good Exorcism see the original from the 80′s because it’s far scarier. Almost as if the devil became more mainstream, like the one from South Park.

Not bad, not good. Sorry. I’d seriously like to see a good horror film set in the UK, but this one is pretty mediocre.

Posted in Devil, Family, Horror, Teen | No Comments »

TV Series: The Walking Dead Season 2

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Rating:

The first season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” was a little bit diappointing – it started out great and then the tension was falling until it reached an over-acted finale that for me and most of my friends simply sucked. The general public thought so too, and the reviews dropped. The second season comes back with a blast and it’s finally regained the pace of the first few episodes of S01. No new characters, but there’s action, lots of zombies and new places. Some parts of the story were a little bit boring, but most of the time we’ve seen nice zombie action. This is the first episode in a while that resulted in me wanting to see the next one. And that was actually a last-chance episode. I thought that if it sucked I’ll stop watching tWD at all, and it did amazingly well!

Posted in Family, Psychological, Thriller, Zombie | No Comments »

Movie: The Happening

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Rating:

Yay, it’s mnightshalamayalatralalan or whatever his name is. Remember him? He made one pretty good movie – the sixth sense – and one barely decent – unbreakable. Apparently after that he decided he’s the king of the world and can convince everyone to believe in stories without meaning and characters that are weird must also be interesting. He was wrong and his movies are constantly made fun of online. Now he’s back with the happening and this time it’s slightly better than his last 7 or 8 films. Wait! I never said it was good. I just said it was better than what he used to do, that sucked a lot.

So we have a family running away from a weird epidemic that causes people to kill themselves for no reason. Maybe someone is transmitting his previous movies to their brains? Yeah, that’s what I thought too but unfortunately that’s not the case. It’s the trees! They hate us for carving “i love justin bieber” on them and decided to wipe us out with their secret weapon that all the scientists and chemists who examined the trees never flund out. Well it’s a secret, that’s why. Oh ok :p

So they travel in groups, the trees kill more and more, they learn about each other, life and what’s really important. You know – the things they always learn in these kinds of movies. And then it’s over and you’re left staring at your houseplant thinking – “hey, someone just stole over two hours of my liFe, you bastard!”. And that pretty much sums it all up.

Posted in Family, Psychological, Sci-Fi, Woods | No Comments »