Faces in the crowds is another dive of Mila Jovovich into the thriller/horror genre, after the action packed Resident Evil series. This time though she’s not as tough (probably for the first time and she’s not killing thousands of zombies. So if you were expecting here to run on the ceilings and shoot at the same time, you’ll probably be disappointed. But the good thing is that this is actually a movie about something, without cheesy 3d effects like throwing the sunglasses at you for no reason. Yeah, I still remember that crappy and pointless scene. Here we have a pretty decent thriller based on a neat idea of a loss of facial recognition memory. In other words – she has seen a killer, but due to a trauma she can’t distinguish people’s faces anymore. So the killer can be anyone. Her husband? The police detective. Her grandma. Me. Well maybe not her grandma, but the gardener perhaps?

The idea is cool and she actually does some acting instead of stunts here which is nice for a change. The movie is pretty well developed, doesn’t get boring quickly and is fun to watch. Not a horror, but if you’re looking for a decent thriller you should definitely check it out.

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.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

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.

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.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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!

The Ward is almost a typical psychological/psychiatric ward thriller that we've seen a couple of times before. A little bit of Shutter Island comes to mind almost instantly, but this movie actually has a horror side to it. Not really scary, but entertaining. The movie starts with a girl burning down an old house and then being move to the insane asylum. The main problem is that 50 years ago standard ways of treating insane people were electroshock therapy and lobotomy, which is actually widely used in movies from that era. So the girl ends up in the hospital with a couple of other girls, but suddenly they start dying, being killed by some ghost/monster/evil thing that resides in the place.

The pace isn’t terribly slow, with plot twists happening every now and then, and near the end we are certain that there’s gonna be a huge twist right there. Too bad it’s predictable, but still it’s a pretty decent film, without many flaws aside from lacking originality sometimes. I recommend it for a movie night with friends, even though most people will forget it after watching. A job well done, but no genius in this insane asylum.

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.

Ok, let’s make it all clear. I hate disgusting horror movies like Hostel and Frontieres. I seriously think that movies need a lot more to be really scary than eyeballs popping out in a realistic way. Those movies are not even horror to me, they’re a way for us to see how sick can we be without looking away. Or whatever. You get my point.

Martyrs is different. It still has an amount of disturbing images, and I mean REALLY disturbing, way more than any Hostel movie ever managed – but at the same time it tries to have a story, a meaning of some sort. It tries to ask questions. And even though the story is not the most clever thing ever written, for some reason this movie got stuck in my head. It’s EXTREMELY disturbing. VERY disgusting. Definitely not a movie for everyone.

And normally I’d give it 1 star and tell you to stay away. But this time it all sort of fits together. It’s not senseless violence for the sake of blood and gore. This movie isn’t even scary. At all. It asks some questions, mostly about afterlife. It tries to be smart.

I think it doesn’t really “win” in it’s category. It’s not a great movie. But it’s so different from everything else, that if you can stand “disgusting images” then you should give it a try. But if hostel was too violent for you, you better stay away.