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?

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.

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.

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.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

The first "Wrong Turn" movie was something new. It was also pretty decent, entertaining and well made. Due to it's sort-of-success a sequel was made, and then the third installment. Each one was much, much worse than the one before, simply showing us that milking the same idea by uncreative people is as common as it is frustrating. So yeah, when I noticed that there’s a part “4″, this time set during the winter I though “Well ok, I’ll give it a shot”. Hoping for something different I rented the dvd, sat down, opened my beer and pressed play. What followed was 90 minutes of evil horror. Too bad it wasn’t because the movie was any good. It sucked so bad that watching it was more of a horror than the movie itself.

First of all it was way more disgusting than any of the parts before. The “Characters” are so stupid, with badly written dialogue that I actually wanted them to die as soon as possible. Well done – doing characters and plot the way that people hate them. Whoop dee doo.

The plot is a little different than before – now the inbred evil trio of brothers seems to occupy an old mental institution that got abandoned after they broke free 30 years before and killed everyone. And I’m asking here and now – Where IS THE LOGIC? I mean they killed everyone in the hospital (and probably ate them), and why didn’t anyone come? Like the police, army or whatever? No instead they just decided to stay there and live. That’s as dumb as a stick with a rusty nail.

Then we have the forced gruesomeness that is not scary at all, just disgusting as hell. The inbreds are pretty similar to the ones from the previous “wrong turns” which is a good thing for continuity, but it’s hardly “part 4″ when some of them died in the first three parts, and now they suddenly all resurrected. Unless “Bloody Beginnings” mean that they simply moved out of the asylum to the woods later on. But that we can forgive. The rest of the shit they keep serving us here we can’t. Sorry, no dice. This is what’s wrong with the horror movie industry. It’s movies like this, made by completely un-creative people that create the illusion that most horror movies suck. And if you want to see a decent “abandoned mental hospital” movie see “Grave Encounters”. This is a definite waste of time.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Ice Spiders is another tv-movie from Sy-Fy channel, so don't expect Hollywood quality (or the lack of it). The channel had many hits and misses with their movies, and unfortunately this is one of the latter. First of all, if you do ice spiders attacking people on the snow, and the only visual effect you can do right is the spider-webs, then something is seriously wrong. “But the budget!” – some may say. Still I think that the monsters themselves are so terribly done and animated, that it almost looks like a spoof film. The acting is a typical tv-horror acting type – they’re not trying to impress anyone and not aiming for the Emmys or Oscars of this world. On a side note, if Emmy is a girls name, maybe she and Oscar should hook up and move out of Hollywood forever? That’d benefit the entertainment industry, since nothing good ever wins them anyway Maybe they could move to Tom Hanks basement and start a family or something. Their first, awkward looking son could be named MTV Video awards and he’d be blind and deaf. Ok got sidetracked like that MC in Jon Lajoie video. Sorry

So back to the ice spiders, shall we? Well there’s really not much here to talk about – the acting is ok, but the plot and suspense is almost non-existant, the spiders look like a joke, and if you’re scared by that movie, it only means you should be watching Barney the Dinosaur (and alleged Pedophile) because you’re in kindergarten and you got confused.  Don’t recommend it. If you want to see a decent Sy-Fy horror movie go watch “House of Bones”. This Ice Spiders thing is about equal to another flop they made called “Flu Bird Horror”.

Dead Silence is an attempt on shocking that almost made it. It has some drawbacks – the main one? The main character is better known for True Blood in which his performance is way better, than here. The plot is a mix of grotesque, gypsy-related dark curses, parents and ventriloquist dolls. All of that is combined into a story, in which a grieving widower doesn’t look like he’s emotionally hurt just days after the death of his wife. Unfortunately it’s also pretty predictable, but hey – hard to come up with a real plot twist nowadays, right?

The scary moments are mostly gore combined with the sudden shocks of loud noises, but it does work, especially in the dark. A good movie to watch with some friends, beer and chips. Some people might even jump up a bit at times.

There are no scary parts here, but it’s nice visually and worth a watch, even for the sake of comparing it to it’s predecessor. And who knows, maybe a few years from now we’ll all have bar codes on our organs and liver mortgage plan. So yeah maybe it tells us something about the dangers of skyrocketing healthcare costs, or something. After all it’s hollywood so it has to have a meaning right? The action is there, the blood is there and a couple of well known actors to top it all off. What more to ask for if you’re in a mood for some pretty entertaining action? But i’d still recommend watching the first REPO movie before this one. After all it’s not a new idea.

It’s never easy to review a classic, especially if it’s such a cult classic as this. I remember chucky from my childhood and how scared I was. Watching it again now is not quite as scary but our tolerance threshold has changed too. It’s still a very good movie with a character that became as well known as freddy and jason so not seeing it is not an option for a horror fan. Sure most special effects are pretty crappy, and it has a lot of comedic relief to take the edge of the violence. It does work as a sort of dark-comedy-horror especially since chucky’s remarks are sometimes really funny.

All in all the second and third Chucky films were better imho, but this one started it all so it deserves credit. Sure it’s cheesy at times and not really scary after most recent horrors but it defines a lot of the genre, so go and watch it if you haven’t already. And if you watched it as a kid go watch it again, it’s worth it.

Wes Craven comes back with a different kind of story right now. This time it’s about some crazy murderer from the past that comes back to kill the kids born on the day of his death. And since they’re 16 now, he’s gonna make their “sweet sixteen” a memorable experience. So we meet the characters which are a typical group of american teens – every kind of person is there. Just in case. They start to die, things start happening and we get more and more confused to who’s really doing that. Is it really that dead serial killer ? Is it one of the kids? Is it the gardener? Well it doesn’t really matter much because the main problem here is actually the boredom. This movie drags. It’s so slow that I had plenty of time to eat my popcorn before it was halfway through. Sorry.

Also – it’s not scary. A typical teen horror, so there are some loud, sudden noises and some blood, but it’s not something that’ll keep you awake at night. Sorry. Unfortunately Wes Craven is not as good as he used to be. This is a mediocre movie, that actually couldn’t be any better. Maybe it’s just me though, but I hate teen-horror movies. Teens are usually stupid and annoying on screen.

So if you like your mind being numb and bored, go watch it. It’s not terrible. It’s just not any good either. A movie that you’ll never remember or reference in your life after watching it. If it’s recommendation enough then go and watch it already