Evil Things
Starring: Laurel Casillo, Morgan Hooper, Ryan Maslyn
Written & Directed By: Dominic Perez
Grade: D+
With the age of digital filmmaking and the style and sub-genre of films like The Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity it really makes it so anyone can make a film. Especially with films like these a lack of budget or visual composition can be written off as a stylistic choice. If you can deliver with the content and suspense to back it up this can work wonders. Films that have done this well have been the largest profiting box office films. Even the best within this sub-genre are more the exception than the norm. The norm is Evil Things. It really looks like an unscripted home video. I guess you can say it paints realism, but if there’s nothing interesting to offer it becomes painfully dull and just pointless.
I didn’t dislike any of the characters. I suppose they seemed real enough and the acting was fine. The thing is I didn’t particularly like them either, they were just there. There is so little action or really anything at all going on in this film. For 90% of the film we are just left with the characters and no other cinematic elements. A group of friends are on their way to a cabin in the woods to get away for awhile. On their way there they suspect one of the locals is following them. As the night goes on they forget and have a good time amongst themselves, only to find out he has been watching them the entire time.
Continue reading ‘DVD Review: Evil Things (2011)’
Films about the walking undead are a dime a dozen. Every Joe Schmo can make a zombie feature length film with his Hi-Def hand-held camera and a modest budget, but this indie ambition in trying to be the next George A. Romero is a false Godsend sent straight from God knows where and seeks what most (ignorant) people crave in horror movies – a good amount of blood and guts. Eventually, the needle in the hay stack will be found, but the agonizing scrambling and digging through endless projects can wear a person down and make their eyes tire of bad taste and boredom. However, a zone lies in between that sole most glorious needle and that vast amount of crap.
Barry J. Gillis, the Toronto based indie filmmaker who brought us the micro budget 1989 Super 8 gorefest Things, which he starred in and was directed by his partner Andrew Jordan with whom he co-wrote and co-produced, has recently unleashed upon the world a project that has been in development for the last 20 years.
The latest release from Pittsburgh’s Michael Todd Schneider of MagGot Films (I Never Left the White Room, A Tribute to Sanity, …And Then I Helped, etc.) is this fun, psychedelic-styled horror anthology with an orangey VHS hue video quality and a “grindhouse” opening.
When horror fans aspiring to be horror filmmakers wait too many years to make their first feature, it normally turns out like Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever; a movie with a little bit of everything thrown in it. It’s like banging a virgin; he’s so excited that he wants to do everything at once, and before you realize what is happening, he blows his load and falls asleep. The Millennium Bug falls into this category. Is it a monster movie or hillbilly horror film? Well… it’s both.
The bright white, elongated face in the midst of a midnight black cloak from the Scream franchise creates a notoriously feared fictional serial murdering figure of the late 90s to early 2000s. The appearance of Ghostface is simple and could be said to be masking an earlier counterpart in Michael Myer’s William Shatner mask and mechanic jumpsuit, but with evil does not need bells and whistles. What evil needs is a clown nose and a dangerous-wielding vibrator when hunting down the cast and crew of a XXX production. This is exactly what happens in Vivid’s latest spoof entitled Scream XXX: A Porn Parody!
Rayne, the half-human half-vampire dhampire, is an empowering female heroine who associates herself with sensual desires and the merciless slaughter of any nocturnal vampire that plagues the earth. The character first appeared in the video game entitled BloodRyane in 2002 for the popular console systems at the time. From then on, three more video game sequels have been released, the most recent was put on this past June, and the series has spawned not one, not two, but three movie adaptations; the third film, BloodRayne: The Third Reich, is the latest disaster-piece done by infamous Duetschland-born director Uwe Boll. In hopes that Rayne would finally have a decent cash return, Boll turns to a making BloodRayne: The Third Reich a prequel to the failing predecessors; Rayne must battle World War II experimental vampire Nazis, along with regular Nazis, who are created by a vile of her day-walking blood.
Normalcy. This term might be the description you, I or even the next door neighbor might label ourselves as we are people who live out our lives day by day with work, family and personal business. As a family, normalcy is getting up at 6 A.M. just for there to be enough time to prepare the work day; normalcy is making sure the kids aren’t causing mischief by throwing firecrackers at the neighborhood drunk on his happy hour walk to the bar; normalcy is kissing your wife at night because she won’t give in giving it up before bedtime.
Mark this period in time, Hustler has made a parody of Ghostbusters! The news of the parody had me worried; think about it, Ghostbusters is a beloved and cherished film of the 1980s; in fact, I’m actually surprised a porn parody hasn’t been done before…way before! If Hustler steered it down toward the wrong path, me and Hustler might have some serious and vulgar words about their parody methods. Director Axel Braun should thank his lucky stars for having the chance to do this parody and that he directed This Ain’t Ghostbusters XXX to the high hopes I think every fan of Ivan Reitman horror comedy and outlandish porno would thoroughly enjoy in many ways than one.
Senior Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) finally has it all going on: he’s running with the popular crowd and dating the most coveted girl in his high school. In fact, he’s so cool he’s even dissing his best friend. But trouble arrives when Jerry (Colin Farrell) moves in next door. He seems like a great guy at first, but there’s something not quite right—but everyone, including Charlie’s mom (Toni Collette), doesn’t notice. After observing some very strange activity, Charlie comes to an unmistakable conclusion: Jerry is a vampire preying on the neighborhood. Unable to convince anyone, Charlie has to find a way to get rid of the monster himself in this Craig Gillespie-helmed revamp of the comedy-horror classic.
There have been famous (or infamous) iconic killers that have been pitted agains’t each other; Freddy vs Jason, Aliens vs Predator and Bruce Campbell vs The Army of Darkness have been glorified as epic battles of a lifetime, but one element separates these versus movies from the latest versus film venture – this one is non-fiction! Dahmer vs Gacy, two notorious homicidal and homosexual serial killers that this nation has ever known, take each other on in a over-the-top battle royal that doesn’t exclude godsend vigilante rednecks, Japanese super ninjas, a genetically altered to be a super killer killer and oblivious scientists and military generals that pull the strings behind the madness. Dahmer vs Gacy implores having two clones versus each other to see which one can take the top spot and become the base for a super soldier for the military. The perfect killer who enjoys to kill.
Is the movie worth the 11-year wait? Sure, why not. If the moronic Saw sequels can be bowel-evacuated every Halloween with straight-to-DVD production values, then there’s no reason you can’t have 4 movies in 3/4ths of a generation that actually make some money. Especially one as nostalgically entertaining as this. Is it perfect? Far from it, but you can only see Insidious so many times, and unless your kids are going to force you to see Rio, there’s nothing else worth watching.
Fifteen years ago, a movie came that changed the slasher genre forever. Not only did the original Scream give us smart and witty characters, it existed in our world. Freddy, Jason & Michael were all there at the local video store. There was a copy of Clerks on VHS at Stu’s house (look for it in the scene when Gale places the hidden camera). They were aware of “The Rules” to surviving a horror movie. It was, in fact, our world. And as we all know, someone took their love of scary movies too far.
Picking up directly after the events of Tobe Hooper’s 2003 version of The Toolbox Murders, survivors Nell and Stephen continue their night of Hell as they’re rushed to the nearby Hollywood Memorial hospital. Meanwhile, detectives Cole and Barnes and criminal profiler McGavin exhume TBK’s modern day tomb and uncover his origins.
The Lamberts are you average American family in a above-average American horror film.
There’s-
Josh (Hard Candy’s Patrick Wilson)- He’s a high school teacher and you learn two times within 30 minutes that there aren’t any photographs of him as a kid. Hmmmmm…
Renai (28 Weeks Later’s Rose Byrne)- She’s raising 3 kids (but only one of them matters) and taking some time off to work on her singer/songwriter career. Judging from her Browneye song in Get Him to the Greek, she’s on the right track. One of her pet peeves is telling everyone her name is pronounced like Renee even though it’s spelled so funky…
