Blood Rush (2012)

Directed by: Evan Marlowe

Writer: Kerry Finlayson

This is simply unwatchable. I don't remember seeing something so profoundly devoid of any talent in a long time. Recently I was very critical of Mr. Hush but compared to Blood Rush, that one looks like The Godfather. Cheap photography, stupid characters, actors that look like they had just failed the audition for a porno movie, horrible special effects... actually, speaking of porno, this entire movie looks like a horror setup for a hardcore scene that never comes.

 

In between the periods when my brain's defense mechanisms took me far away, to a beautiful land where I'm tied to a chair and forced to listen the water dripping, I was able to make out a story about some kind of infection spreading through a small town, but that's really completely unimportant when you're faced with the horrors of filmmaking at its absolutely lowest. This tries to be some kind of horror comedy, with "humor" that's obviously inspired by the Japanese authors like Yoshihiro Nishimura (for example, the gag where we follow the POV of a flying shovel), but they only manage to rip off the cheap special effects, while completely missing the spirit of those gags.

 

After all, see this trailer and decide if this is your cup of tea. As for me, I implore Marlowe and Finlayson never to make another movie. Ever. Please.

 

 

The Facility (2012)

Directed by: Ian Clark

Writer: Ian Clark

Seven people volunteer as guinea pigs for the testing of some powerful new drug. They are taken to a remote facility, far away from any road or city, and have to stay there for two weeks, while the effects of the drug are tested. You won't believe it, but bad stuff happens.

 

One by one, the people start experiencing the horrible side effects of the drug that include, but are not limited to, violent behavior. The beauty of the facility's remote location is that they can't leave, so they have to wait for the next day and hope that someone will come to the rescue (of course, the phones aren't working and there's no Internet access). But that's not the end of it - any possibility of organizing into a group is effectively ruined by the fact that they have no idea who got the placebo and who the real drug, so they can't predict who's going to snap next.

 

The story offers no big surprises and earth-shattering plot twists, but it's believable, the characters (with the exception of one or two) are not irritating and the director did a good job of conveying the feeling of tension and paranoia. This is a low budget movie that uses the handheld camera a lot, but it's mostly justified by the context and the low budget doesn't really show. It seems to me that British filmmakers pay more attention to the cinematography than the Americans (of course, I'm referring strictly to this type of film). All in all, this is certainly no [REC] or John Carpenter's The Thing, but it's a good little debut movie that I think will satisfy most B-horror lovers who, like myself, are tired of the flood of cheap crappy found-footage films that comes our way for the past few years. Never trust the pharmaceutical industry, those people are evil!

The Kovak Box (2006)

Directed by: Daniel Monzón

Writers:  Jorge Guerricaechevarría, Daniel Monzón

Timothy Hutton plays a sci-fi writer who arrives on an island in Spain to participate in a conference or something. Everything's wonderful at first, but strange things quickly start happening. First there's a mysterious and disturbing video sent to him to his hotel room, then the unexplainable suicide of his girlfriend, who jumps off a window for no apparent reason. Just as Hutton's about to leave the island, he meets a young girl who also attempted suicide in the same way as his girlfriend. She claims that someone's after her. At first Hutton doesn't believe her, but then there's another suicide right on the airport, so they join forces in an attempt to find out whoever the hell wants to kill her and discover what the hell is going on.

 

This is one of those mystery movies that are wonderful at the beginning, when there's a building tension, a sense of paranoia, conspiracy and all that stuff. It's also competently directed and the characters are likeable. However, as it usually happens, the mystery itself is much more interesting than its solution. Once we find out the reason behind all that, it boils down to a rather conventional bad guy vs. good guy showdown. Near the end there's a potentially great mass suicide scene that unfortunately wasn't directed very well, so its impact (and the one of the movie itself) was greatly reduced.

 

 

A Haunting At Silver Falls (2013)

Directed by: Brett Donowho

Writers: Cam Cannon, Rachel Long, Brian Pittman

 

This starts off like a fairly standard ghost picture. Our heroine is a young girl who lost her parents, so she's staying with her aunt and her husband and one night she finds a ring that she puts on and can't take off later. Immediately after that she starts having a heavy case of ghost haunting - apparently, she's being chased by the spirits of two long gone twin sisters who want their damn ring back.

 

She's not exactly getting along with her aunt (or anyone else, come to think of it) and her only solace is a her nerd boyfriend who's a spitting image of a teen version of Eli Roth. However, soon it turns out that the spirits that haunt her don't mean harm - in fact, their father had been wrongfully accused for killing them and they are trying to lead her to the real perpetrator.

 

To me this idea was very appealing. With everyone (especially her relatives) acting more and more strange, it soon turns out that the only persons she can trust are - the dead twin sisters. It doesn't happen very often that you root for ghosts against the living people, so this movie has a point for originality because of that. Also, I quite liked the middle part of it, because it had a very nice kind of tense atmosphere where everyone seemed to be after our heroine.

 

However, everything falls apart at the ending, which is confusing and leaves heaps of questions unanswered. It's not the Michael Haneke kind of open ending, where you have to figure out what happened yourself (like in Hidden, for example) but rather a shining example of sloppy writing.

 

Still, this all makes for a rather pleasant and interesting viewing. If you liked this movie (and even if you didn't) I heartily recommend you watch Frank LaLoggia's Lady in White, a wonderful little film with somewhat similar story in a more Stephen King-like setting.

The Demented (2013)

Directed by: Christopher Roosevelt

Writer: Christopher Roosevelt

Last night some of my friends and I were choosing which horror movie to watch. So I'm browsing through my catalogue (I'm using EMDB by the way, wonderful stuff, highly recommended) and I stumble upon this thing. So I start reading the plot outline aloud: "Six college friends..." and I'm immediately interrupted by an unanimous "That's it! We're watching it!"

 

Of course, a movie about six college friends is hardly going to deliver any surprises. These guys (and girls) get together for a weekend, but their amazing fun is interrupted first by a scary-looking and aggressive dog and then by a news of a mysterious attack. It appears to be a biological attack of some sort and people are turned into bloodthirsty homicidal maniacs. Led by a dumb as a doorknob white guy, our group of heroes begins an unlikely fight for survival.

 

The most important mistake made by the author of this movie is that there are no zombies and apparently no contagion. The infected are aiming to kill rather than to infect the survivors, which is really disappointing. We all know that in movies like this the main source of tension is the moment when you're supposed to shoot your dead girlfriend who's attacking you. The Demented has no such moments. Speaking of the infected, one cool thing about them is that they stand completely frozen and only move (i.e. attack) when they're awaken by noise. However, the director completely missed this great opportunity. The attacks are not all that exciting and there are no scenes of women taking off their tops and tying them around their shoes to make less noise. Oh well, I guess I'll have to put that in my screenplay.

 

The beginning of the movie is dedicated to... ahem... some kind of "character" "development". And it's really boring. The aforementioned white guy loves his girlfriend to death, but she feels she's being smothered by his love. Of course, she doesn't tell that to him, but to her best friend. The same guy professes great friendship to some black guy. The host of the party is an irritating moron who cheated on his girlfriend with the girlfriend of that black guy. She finds out about that and gets really pissed off. The girlfriend of our (seemingly) main hero had already told her earlier that she was skeptical about their relationship. And so on. Yet only one of these relations has any consequence on the future proceedings. Talk about wasted time.

 

And their weekend also sucks ass and is actually improved by the appearance of that rabid dog. First they talk about how great it's going to be, the time of their lives, blah blah blah, turns out they spend their time sliding down the grass and shooting one another with water guns. Wow! Massive respect! I must say I support the absence of drugs and heavy drinking, but they could've at least had an orgy or something. All in all, this is not entirely unwatchable, but there are many, many much better low budget movies with similar story.

Evil Dead (2013)

Directed by: Fede Alvarez

Writers: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues

 

Will you look at that poster? Just look at it. Try to spot the name of the movie. Not easy, huh? Yes, it's down there, written in a rather tiny font compared to ALL THE PRAISE IN CAPITAL LETTERS that takes the whole damn upper half. See, this crap pisses me off. This movie is neither astonishing, nor awesome, nor near perfect. At best, it's bearable. Isn't there some kind of punishment for false advertising?

When it comes to horror remakes, there seems to be a tradition to only retain the original story, while stripping off everything else that gives soul to the movie. For example, the remake of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water didn't contain any of the scary scenes, effectively turning it into some kind of supernatural psychological drama instead of a ghost horror. The movie was still good, but completely different. The remake of Shutter, which happens to be one of the scariest movies ever made, also ripped off all the horror scenes, effectively turning it into a completely unwatchable piece of crap. And here?

First of all, all the characters are idiots. There's a junkie, her brother, a nerdy guy with glasses, a black nurse and some blonde. Their mission is to help the junkie one get off the drugs, by keeping her completely isolated in the wilderness. Can't see how that can go wrong. The junkie's brother has some kind of guilt trip, he wasn't present when his mother was dying, so his junkie sister is pissed off at him. I mean, come on, bitch! Leave this crap to Edward Burns! Screw you and screw your personal problems!

Fortunately, all that is thrown aside when the nerdy guy reads aloud from Necronomicon and summons some evil demon, who promptly takes possession of the junky girl. But here another problem immediately steps in - the junkie girl starts seeing a scary ghost-like being (that happens to be a witch of some kind who was killed in the prologue). She informs the others, but guess what - they don't believe her (!). Would you believe a stupid story like this, coming from someone with abstinence crisis? Of course not. But the problem I'm trying to mention is that these apparitions are completely unnecessary - is this the remake of The Evil Dead or Ringu???

As crap keeps happening, the movie throws at us more and more unnecessary references to some legendary horror films, mostly The Exorcist and the aforementioned Ringu. OK, Fede, we get it! You watched some classic movies! Good for you! Fortunately, while we don't care about characters one bit (the lead guy, the junkie girl's brother, is so insanely irritating that I can't even begin to describe it), the way they hurt themselves and others is more often than not really violent. There are chainsaws, nail guns, limbs chopped off, self-mutilation, all that with buckets of gore and it really looks good. But it would've been even better if the scenes were brighter. I'm not saying the movie is frustratingly dark - we do see quite enough, but when it comes to gore, it's the more the merrier.

The screenplay sucks, with all that drama mumbo-jumbo and the unnecessary witch (or whatever) subplot, but that's partially corrected by Alvarez's competent direction that provides some rather nice images, not only the gory ones, but also the views of the cabin, surrounding forest, etc. However, the movie commits the mortal sin of disrespecting the two key scenes from the original. The legendary rape scene is technically present, but it's turned into something completely different that barely bears (hehe) any relation. And the wonderful scene with cards is completely absent! Who in their right mind would remake The Evil Dead and leave out the most wonderful scene, that in my opinion (and I'm certain I'm not alone in this) is one of the top 10 scenes in any horror movie? And they also left out the "the" in the title.

If this movie had any other name, I would have gladly concentrated on its superiority to the majority of recent horror movies. This way, it's a remake of something that's vastly superior in every possible way, and that has to be taken into account.

When you watch the movie (and I recommend you do that, despite all I've said before), make sure to watch the credits all the way. You'll get a pleasant surprise.



Kairo (2001)

Directed by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

When there's no more room for ghosts in the next world, the living will start commiting suicides and turning into black spots on walls, at least that's what Kiyoshi Kurosawa tells us in this slow, atmospheric and frustratingly complicated film. The main problem with this movie is that it doesn't go for the cheap jump scares and shameless exploitation of long-haired ghosts (though it does have some of that), but instead tries to make a clever statement about human loneliness and how modern technology is separating us and crap like that. It also has some features of an arthouse film, like when you have absolutely no idea what the hell is happening and why is everyone doing whatever the hell they're doing.

 

The story begins with a suicide of some guy. But, not only did he kill himself, he also turned into a black spot on the wall. At the same time, some other guy stumbles upon a scary website that promises their visitors interaction with the dead (!). At the same time, there's a scary mysterious room that harbours a horrifying secret. Some friends try to investigate what's going on, but they can do little to prevent the bizarre series of suicides that threatens to make the entire world (or at least Japan) look like Pripyat, Ukraine.

 

I found this movie incredibly difficult to follow. I don't know whether the problem was with the subtitles, or the director in most scenes didn't try too hard to establish the location, or I'm just stupid - anyway, I had mostly no idea who these people were and where did this all take place. And it's all so sloooooooooooooow and sloooooooooooooow and it's bearable for the first half an hour because there's an occasional scare here and there (like the first visit to the Forbidden Room, that one was spine-chilling) and you still have hope that things will actually resolve or something. However, from there on, it just seemed to me that Kurosawa was making some kind of style exercise, for himself rather than for the audience and I almost completely lost interest.

The last part of the movie has some nice apocalyptic images and this is the first movie I've seen that combines a J-horror with an actual apocalypse in such a direct way. It's a great idea, but I would've preferred it to be realized in a more conventional story. I'm not saying this movie was bad, of course. It was just a bit too hermetic for my taste, but if you like the films of, say, David Lynch, by all means I recommend you give it a try.