Our good friend and dedicated member Andrew made this video review, and we decided to test it out on Horror Yearbook. Check it out and let us know if he should make more or lay it to rest…
Laid To Rest (2009)
Directed by Robert Hall
Synopsis:
A terrifying story of a young girl who wakes up in a casket with a traumatic head injury and no memory of her identity. She quickly realizes she was abducted by a Deranged Serial Murderer and in an isolated rural town she must survive the night and outsmart the technologically inclined killer who is hellbent on finishing what he started.
Continue reading ‘Video Movie Review: Laid To Rest’
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another exciting edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, a column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.
Actually, the good folks (folk?) at horroryearbook had nothing to do with this one. This time around I was contacted directly by my chum Sonny Fernandez. Sonny should a familiar name to anyone who spends quality time on this fine website. Sonny is non other than the hardworking mastermind behind Down Twisted Studios. I’ve already reviewed four of his past efforts in previous ICFTMB columns. You can check out those reviews here and here.
Retroslashers just published one of the first reviews of Dario Argento’s latest film, Giallo, which you can check out here. You actually didn’t think we had the “first” review did you? That would require effort, a foreign word to Horror Yearbook and its staff.
The film was written by Jim Agnew, who brought us the very underrated Soulkeeper, and Sean Keller. It stars Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky, and Robert Miano, and obviously it was directed by Dario Argento.
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another exciting edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, a column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.
It’s no secret that your old pal Brain Hammer is a bit of a television junkie. Hell, I spent all last night glued to my television set, weeping uncontrollably as I watched Jon & Kate announcing their separation. My unhealthy obsession with Full House is the stuff of internet legend. This helps explain why my drunken and shiftless editor Wil would decide to send me a pair of screeners featuring actors and actresses that first became famous for their roles on the small screen…before fading away into total obscurity. Straight to video horror flicks with Mischa Barton AND Luke Perry?!? I knew this was going to be a rough ride.
Deadgirl took a few years to be released because of its controversial subject matter. I am very glad that it did as it’s one of the most creative zombie films to come out in quite some time. Nearly every zombie film has followed the Romero Night of the Living Dead inspired formula. The zombie outbreak takes place, the living run desperately, find somewhere to hide, and eventually make their final escape before the zombies corner them. We have gotten a few films that break away from this formula such as Fido, but for the amount of zombie films that come out very few follow a different story structure. Deadgirl doesn’t even use the word zombie and only shows one zombie throughout the film. The dead girl has been killed, but keeps on coming back to life. She also spreads her undead virus by biting her victims. Aside from not dying and her method of infecting others just about everything else is unique from other films in the zombie genre.
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another exciting edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, a column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way!
This time around it was a trio of short films from writer/director Patrick Rea’s SenoReality Pictures. SenoReality Pictures is a production company out of Lawrence Kansas that has turned out a number of well received short films over the past five years. When I received an e-mail from Molly about reviewing some of these films I didn’t bother doing any research at all about the subject matter. I just chose the three flicks from the list that I thought had the most interesting titles: NEXT CALLER, NOW THAT YOU’RE DEAD, and MRS. BRUMETT’S GARDEN. Since these were short films with running times ranging from 14 - 20 minutes, I decided to tackle all three in one sitting and then do a review for all of them. It turned out to be a wild ride!
Mikael (Thomsen) is having a mid-life crisis. He has left his job for awhile and is devoting his free time to himself. He goes canoeing with his friend and brother-in-law and jumps at the chance to participate in a trial for an anti-depressant drug. Mikael doesn’t particularly feel depressed, but he knows he wants something more from life. He begins taking the pills and has to go in for check ups every 2 weeks. He keeps this a secret from his wife, Sigrid (Steen), desperate to have something for himself. He doesn’t feel any change for quite some time then suddenly he feels happy, much happier than he can ever remember feeling. Mikael feels that Sigrid has slowly taken control of everything in his life without her even realizing it. He begins to take back control step by step.
Kids Go to the Woods…Kids Get Dead is reminiscent of old slashers shown on TV alongside a flirtatious horror hostess. It has many elements of the campy horror film, away in the middle of nowhere. We have the old crazy veteran that gives the kids their fair warning, but is impossible for the characters to take him seriously. They are mostly consumed with sex and having a wild time anyway, which in the case of the typical slasher formula is promised to just kill them faster. One thing unique here is that everything that happens to them comes from a book by the same name that one of the characters is reading.
Plot: Catherine Dean (Jennifer Lopez) is a psychotherapist working for a unconventional and innovative new technique of treatment, allowing her mind enter in to her patients minds. They have found a revolutionary approach to helping patients through their authentic thoughts and memories. However, the researchers are in risk of getting shut down since they haven’t been able to prove any concrete progress. Catherine decides to take a risk to save the work they have been doing when F.B.I. agent, Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn), asks her to step in to the mind of a serial killer. She is in danger of being under his control by doing this, but she believes she might be able to reach out to him, get him to trust her, and help uncover where his existing victims are. Catherine learns about the killer’s tragic past of child abuse and aggression. She forms a trusted bond between the two of them starting with him as a child. Catherine begins to understand him and gets closer to him, she is in danger of being one of his victims as well.
An cute and ambitious loan officer named Christine Brown (Alison Lohman)decides to show her boss that she can handle tough decisions by refusing to give an old woman a third extension on her overdue mortgage payments. This decision causes a chain event of terror when the hacking old hag stops begging for mercy and turns vengeful and violent. The deranged old woman later ambushes and attacks Christine in the parking lot before finally subduing her long enough to place a deadly gypsy curse on her.
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another exciting edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, a column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.
I was pleasantly surprised to open my mailbox and find a screener copy of the latest Crispin Glover horror epic - SIMON SAYS waiting for me. He who walks with density first turned heads in the horror genre way back in 1984 with his incredible dance moves in Friday The 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter. After years of appearing in big budget Hollywood blockbusters and directing movies with all-retard casts, Crispin has recently returned to his horror roots with starring roles in the poorly received Willard and Wizard Of Gore remakes. SIMON SAYS on the other hand is notable for NOT being a remake, and for being the first time horror effort from the 60-something year old director of Harry & The Hendersons! It also sat on the shelf for three years waiting for a release. Could it be THAT bad?
This Side of Nightmare begins with a young lesbian couple, Piper and Ashley, driving through largely vacant roads in New Mexico. When they hit a rabbit in the road they get out of the care to check it out. A care drives by offering to help, but the girls avoid them and try to get out of there as fast as possible as they can tell there is something not right with these women. However, they aren’t able to get rid of them that easily. The women in this car go after them with the intentions for murder.
Piper and Ashley were one of the high points of the short. I was very relieved that they weren’t just played/written as “the lesbian couple”. They were actually given depth and they felt like real people rather than the stereotype they easily could have become. Also, these girls were smart characters and made it a lot easier to actually care whether they died or not.
Carnivorous isn’t a horror film to take seriously and wasn’t meant to be but it had the potential to be cheesy fun or just a horribly formulaic and ridiculous film. Sadly, the final product leans more towards the ladder. There really aren’t any funny moments here, not even in the sense that it’s “so bad it’s good”. Just about everything we see is void of any intelligence, especially from the stereotypical characters and the poorly written dialogue. It is clearly trying to rip off Anaconda, but it is just that; a rip off, nothing more.
When Alan Cade (Herthum) was young he stole an ancient writing device from a voodoo priest nearby. He uses this on his abusive father, which unleashes this monstrous creature with a massive snake body and a snappy crocodile mouth on him. Years later, Alan is happily married until a group of teenagers accidentally kill his wife in a car accident. To get revenge he draws with this voodoo tool again, promising that these teenagers will be the creature’s next victims. Some of the teens begin disappearing and the others realize that there is a dangerous creature out there that might be connected to what’s going on. However, they have no idea what they are dealing with until they come across Alan. Realizing what he has done, he tries to put a stop to the monster. So he goes to the voodoo priest’s grandson, Nick (DMX), for help. Nick has been desperate to kill the creature he calls, Lockjaw, for quite some time and agrees to help to take him down. However, once his victims have been drawn they are as good as dead.
One goes into Terminator Salvation with more questions than actual anticipation…
A mere quarter of a century after James Cameron launched his Terminator series with future Cali governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, we get a quad-quel in Terminator Salvation we really didn’t ask for, but will probably watch anyway because it stars Batman. If this movie starred anyone else but Bale, would you even care, considering the trailers were less than whelming and looked a little too much like Transformers…but dustier?
T4’s also PG-13, which is almost always a debit as that kiss of death has pretty much punctured the sac of the horror genre. Look at what happened two years ago when the Die Hard franchise was saddled with the emasculation of only being able to say “fuck” once, no gore to speak of, and watered-down action. I’m not against PG-13 in general, considering one of the greatest action movies of the past 20 years, The Fugitive, was also PG-13, but it’s proven to be the exception to the unfortunate rule.
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, an exciting column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.
When I opened my mailbox the other day I was surprised to find a package from my drunken and shiftless editor Wil. I knew the package came from Wil because it was addressed in crayon and smelled like cheap whiskey. I don’t remember getting an e-mail about this one either. This is what my friend Chop-Top would refer to as a BONUS BODY! The package contained an advance screener copy of a flick titled THE LANDLORD that classifies itself as a “horror/comedy/drama.” I have to admit that description made me a bit apprehensive, as did the 98 minute running time. But I’m a big time highly respected movie critic now, so I swallowed my fears (along with some Miller High Life) and popped the disc into my dvd player.
