Stop me if you’ve heard this before…
7 friends meet at a cabin by a creek (hence the title of the movie The Creek…as opposed to 7 Friends Meet at A Cabin). It’s a tradition they’ve been enacting for years. They drink. They smoke. They do everything but have sex.
But one night, one fateful and tragic night, one of the friends, Billy (Tim Jesiolowski) is killed. He gets bludgeoned by a rock to the head by an unseen hand. The police determine it was an accident. Billy was drunk and he fell over and hit his head on a rock. And because police in independent horror films are complete fucking morons, we accept this rather weak story thread because we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise. If you’ve seen enough independent (read: Dollar store budget) horror films, you wish police in the movies were halfway intellectual so we wouldn’t have to sit through so many of these shitty no budget/no acting/no production value/no story direct-to-DVD-only-family-members-of-the-crew-and-cast-have-heard-of-it movies that make an hour and a half seem like watching grass grow.
Continue reading ‘DVD Review: The Creek (2008)’
REC is one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen, it is terrifying, fast paced and refuses to adhere to many of the clichés that plague modern horror. Sure, there’s several telegraphed jump scares here and there, but they never felt forced or out of place. Actually, the fact that in the back of your mind you knew it was going to happen just improves the overall sense of dread that runs rampant through the film. I’ve been watching fright flicks since I was a child, weaned by my mother on Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing and anything else I could get my tiny hands on. From there I’ve spent the majority of my thirty plus years watching every horror film I can get my eyes in front of and it’s extremely rare that any movie ever scares me. I’m not saying this to sound like a badass, but to express how desensitized I am to “scary movies.” That being said REC scared the fucking shit out of me. I was up until two or three in the morning following my initial viewings (I watched it twice, back to back) convinced that every creak of the ceiling or neighbor’s cat was one of the zombies breaking into my house. Thank god I don’t live in an apartment complex or I may have ended up shooting one of my neighbors in the face.
It seems every year there is a movie like Summer Scars making the festival rounds… and every year it seems like I am disappointed with the “newest confrontational coming-of-age thriller.” Most of the time these chilling tales of innocence lost are a bit too cliché and unfortunately, Summer Scars is not an exception to the rule.
One way to know that you have been successful in the music industry is if Weird Al spoofs one of your songs. The same rule applies to the movie industry. Your movie ain’t shit unless there is a porn parody of it and the latest horror film to receive this honor is American Werewolf in London. Arguably the greatest werewolf film ever made was not done wrong by Seduction Cinema’s An Erotic Werewolf in London, the totally spank-worthy, soft-core satire of Landis’ film. Even though the story is more Interview with a Werewolf than Werewolf in London, this is not the type of film that you are suppose to pay attention to the plot. It is totally about the T&A, the type of soft-core film that makes you wonder why they didn’t go 100% hardcore, because it is basically porn already.
Those Brits love their zombies. As of late (and not counting the great George Romero) they’re the ones that have really been bringing something to a subgenre that should have already burned itself out. Both 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead took two disparate approaches and brought back two fabulous films. The Vanguard is the latest flick from across the lake to do their version on zombies vs. man, but it looks like the subgenre has indeed finally worn itself out. Or this movie just isn’t very good. Or maybe it’s a little of both…
They Wait is another American take on the Asian environment meant to give us sudden and unexpected scares. In a lot of ways this film seems like a million of its’ kind that we have seen before. There are the typical high pitched sounds and sudden flashes of light that leads to the ghosts. This doesn’t give us any explanation and certainly doesn’t scare. It really just shows a lack of substance. While most of the film is fairly predictable, it does give us some interesting moments that even stumble across some depth and societal wrongs. This alongside some likeable characters gives us a reason to care a bit more and take the good with the bad.
Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, an exciting new column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to send my way.
At this point poking fun at Uwe Boll and his collection of shitty films is akin to making fun of President Bush or kicking the arm braces out from under some palsy kid. It’s just too easy, so why bother. Boll has spent the last five years cementing his place in film history as the Ed Wood of this generation. He makes crap films based off of lower tier video games such as House of the Dead, BloodRayne and Alone in the Dark and by taking advantage of German tax shelters his films rarely lose money. I suppose I should be upfront and admit that I’m a bit of a fan of Boll; admittedly it’s of his “Fuck You” attitude towards the generic Hollywood machine then his films. But I’ve picked up every single DVD he’s put out in the states and I’ve enjoyed all the shit he’s smeared across celluloid since appearing in American markets back in 2003. Sure the enjoyment I’ve experienced is in the “so bad it’s good” vein which is why I was surprised that I truly enjoyed his latest flick Seed with slightly less irony than I expected.
The Breed is just another killer dog movie that will easily get lost in its’ tracks. It doesn’t have anything else to offer that superior films such as Cujo, an obvious inspiration of the movie, hasn’t already given us. Let’s just forget that Wes Craven had anything to do with this, shall we? Nothing about this movie even gives us a hint of the brilliant and chilling mind of Craven. Luckily, he only produced this, so it was merely a poor investment choice rather than any hint of his creative abilities. Nicholas Mastandrea does okay at best in his directing debut with The Breed, but that is all since that is all the movie itself ever is. Mastrandrea manages to hold the film together by bringing out the most in the cast, yet overall it is far too unrealistic, at times cheesy, and I really don’t see how this movie could scare anyone: which is proof that ultimately it falls short.
First and foremost it should be made known that this Death Race has almost nothing to do with the 1975 Roger Corman produced classic. Other than a handful of character names, the film’s title and the fact that there are cars involved there is little connecting this remake to the original. Truthfully, this race has more in common with video games like Mario Kart and Twisted Metal than it does with the black comedy it’s supposed to be a remake of.
Mirrors manages to resist the simple ghost story clichés and predictability. Even though it is not among the greatest, it still severely squashes the vast majority of mediocre films that have premises that are not all that different. It accomplishes this by having a solid story and doesn’t feel the need to reveal it in a big twist. Instead, it gradually is revealed to us at piece by piece at the same time our main character is learning and discovering the information for himself and learning what he has to do to stop what will otherwise be the inevitable.
With such a funny and offensive title like RetarDead, How did Rick Popko manage to make such an un-funny and non-offensive film? The sequel to Monsturd, RetarDead is not without any smirks or chuckles, every time they mentioned the “poop monster” I giggled like a 14-year-old girl. But leftover jokes from its predecessor doesn’t make a good follow-up.
Pineapple Express is a stoner comedy given to us by the Apatow team and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg who gave us the hilarious and very fun Superbad about this time last summer. The stoner character that Rogen gives us is very similar to the character he played in Knocked Up. Interestingly enough, Pineapple Express manages to still bring new things to the table and gives us a completely different tone unlike any other Apatow film. It is really a crime and action stoner comedy. The comedy seems to make the action seem more bizarre and the action highlights that the comedy is really the only medicine in a situation this messed up. at times it is more one than the other, but in many ways these different aspects highlight the other.
We live in very interesting times. A year ago, I would never have given any thought to Rob Cohen’s The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor. The first two Mummy films were fun, disposable entertainment that owed more to the Indiana Jones films than to the great Mummy films from Universal Pictures and Hammer Film Productions. No one would call Stephen Sommers a visionary, but he knew how to make decent summer popcorn films loaded with CGI effects and pleasing characters. The best thing to come out of The Mummy Returns was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the Scorpion King. He even got his spin off film the following year– The Scorpion King.
The Ruins is an adaptation of a novel, directed by the original author, Scott. B. Smith. They both have the same basic story outline, but the movie does have a few differences. The main is that the characters; most of what happened to a given character in the book happens to a different character in the movie. Besides that it is pretty minor, but loyal fans of the book might still have problems. For those who haven’t read it though, there aren’t too many problems to be found with the movie.
