Decay (2012)

Directed by: Luke Thompson, Michael Mazur (co-director)

Writer: Luke Thompson

This film has not been authorized or endorsed by CERN. It is purely a work of fiction.

 

Is it now? Damn, and I thought all those zombies were real! What a disappointment!

 

Anyway, this is a really horrible horror film that takes place at the infamous LHC in Switzerland - surely you remember that place, a few years ago some kind of apocalypse was supposed to happen there but it failed miserably, as usual. Well, at least in this movie that bloody collider did some good - it didn't create any black holes that would swallow the planet, but it did cause a good old zombie outbreak.

 

I have to admit that I failed to understand anything in this movie. I had absolutely no idea who the main characters were (except that they were really annoying), what exactly was their job at CERN. There was also some professor that was playing some kind of a double game (that might be a spoiler, sorry), but I didn't understand what was his precise agenda. I also didn't understand how all those zombies came to existence. It might have something to do with me watching the movie on 4X for the purpose of this review, but if I remember correctly, I also didn't understand it when I saw it first, last summer. Hopefully it's the bad writing, but on the other hand maybe I'm just stupid.

 

Be that as it may, this movie fails on all accounts. While the story itself is passable (well, it's a standard zombie story, one of the coolest things in the world, you really have to work hard to mess that up), the screenplay is bad. The characters are idiots and in the moments of greatest danger they argue about who slept with who, who betrayed whom, who's an asshole (all of them) and stuff like that. The actors are even worse than in an average low budget movie and among them the final girl (TM) easily takes the cake. Rarely have I seen a creature so tragically robbed of any charisma, not to mention the acting talent. And when she gets all emotional with her new boyfriend and you are aware that it's still a loooong time till the end of the movie, that's a good test of your low budget horror endurance.

 

Basically, these people, who are students of some sort, are running down the LHC maintenance tunnels looking for a way to escape both from the building and the zombies. The writer/director Thompson occasionally throws at us some physics-related mumbo-jumbo to keep us entertained (or to show how cool he is), but it's not much relevant to the very simple plot. The direction also leaves a lot of room for improvement, with most of the scenes intended to be scary ending up being unintentionally funny. Also, I imagine Thompson cared about his characters more than I did, so while I was happy every time someone died, there's a possibility he intended those scenes to be serious.

 

After about an hour of chasing around through various tunnels and hallways, a welcome change of scenery happens at the very end, but it's all too brief to bring any substantial improvement. That ending was probably the only thing I liked in this movie and if they ever make a sequel, I'll seriously consider watching it, even after this train-wreck. Apparently, this movie was made by physics PhD students, which is a bit irritating. What makes them think that anyone can make a movie? It's a process slightly more complicated than "buy a camera and shoot some stuff" procedure. Imagine if some filmmaker who had never heard anything about physics since high school attempted to write a scientific paper. Doesn't work, eh? Well this is not much different.

 

On the other hand, I have to admit that maybe I'm being too much of a bitch here, even though the movie was very bad. First of all, it was made for a budget of 2000 pounds. How the heck did they managed to do that, I haven't a slightest idea. Just the tickets to Switzerland for the cast and crew would probably cost more. Anyway, for such a meager budget, the movie doesn't look entirely horrible and has some decent special effects. Secondly, the movie is free - you can download it from the company's website http://www.decayfilm.com/ Respect for that.

La cara oculta (2011)

Directed by:  Andi Baiz

Writers: Hatem Chraiche Ruiz-Zorilla, Andi Baiz (screenplay), Hatem Chraiche Ruiz-Zorilla, Arturo Infante (story)



If by any chance this is the first time you hear about this movie, immediately proceed with the following steps:

1) Read the rest of this text (it's completely spoiler free),

2) By all means avoid watching any trailers or reading any spoiler non-free reviews,

3) Promptly get the movie and watch it immediately because it absolutely rules!

Here's roughly what happens in the first half an hour or so: This guy Adrian, a young (and apparently very attractive to women, lucky bastard) Spanish orchestra conductor, gets dumped by his girlfriend Belen via a video message. Completely dumbfounded, he goes to a bar to drown his sorrow and there he meets a hot as hell young waitress called Fabiana, whom he promptly picks up, because he can. Lucky bastard. You would think he would spend some time mourning his previous relationship, but noooooooooooooo sir, this girl (whose hotness I can't stress enough) moves with him in what seems to be a matter of days. Lucky bastard.

 

Anyway, what I should mention is that all this takes place in a large house in Colombia, near its capital Bogota, the house which Adrian rents because he prefers the peace and quiet of the country to the city's... whatever the hell is the opposite of peace and quiet. To get back to the story, Adrian may have solved the lack of girlfriend problem, but other troubles kick in. First of all, the police are on his trail - as Belen apparently had never left the country, she's pronounced missing and guess who's the prime suspect? As if that wasn't enough, strange things happen in the house, mainly in the bathroom when Fabiana's using it (which, fortunately for us, she does quite often). Strange noises, water turning hot for no apparent reason, waves in the water in the sink when it should be perfectly still, et cetera, all that prompts Fabiana to think the house may be haunted. That's more than enough to give stress even to someone who picks up women so easily as Adrian, lucky bastard.

 

While this may sound rather mundane, the movie's structure and things that happen after that are anything but. Fabiana is scared of the house, but she also suspects that Adrian may still love Belen, he reassures her, blah blah, and than suddenly we see a ghostly face in the mirror and we are thrown back in time to get the explanation for all that's happening. We see Belen and Adrian, apparently a very happy couple, moving from Spain to Colombia because of his job and renting that awfully big house from some German lady. But that house also has a very interesting secret, which will become known to Belen during a conversation with the landlady, and it will kick everything in motion. Prepare yourself for a wonderfully conceived and directed story that's full of twists, it grabs you and won't let go until the ending, but also be prepared for a big emotional investment. I'm not talking about some teenage melodrama crap - this movie will have characters fall into grave dangers because of completely stupid small mistakes and you will probably very often find yourself rooting for them to overcome them. "No, no, watch that, watch it... nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!", "The mirror, look in the mirror!!! Yesssssssssssssssss!!!", "What the hell are you doing, you stupid bitch!!!??!?!?!?!?!" are some of the comments I made during some of the more tense moments in the film.

 

I simply cannot recommend this movie enough. If the greatly written and original story enhanced by good performances is not enough for you, then two beautiful female leads should persuade you. By the way, if you've seen this film and liked it, by all means check out the wonderful French film with Audrey Tautou called He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, which has a structure similar to this movie (same events shown from the perspectives of two main characters, where the shift of perspectives suddenly gives a very dark tone to what we have seen previously).

State of Emergency (2011)

Directed by: Turner Clay


Writer: Turner Clay

People turning into bloodthirsty monsters because of a toxin of some kind? A small group of isolated survivors fights to stay alive? Count me in! When done right (such as here), this type of movies always brings joy to my heart.

First of all, a small technical matter: I think correct terminology is very important, so it always pisses me off when people talk about 28 Days Later or [REC] or some similar movie and call the creatures that appear there zombies. Those are NOT zombies! Zombies are living dead. Those are not dead, they are just infected and very angry. Basically, you have zombies (which themselves can be divided into two groups - Romero style zombies and fast running zombies, like in the Dawn of the Dead remake) and creatures like in 28 Days Later, which we will call infected. State of Emergency deals with this latter group.

The setting is rather minimalistic, both character-wise and location-wise. There are only four principal characters and two locations. Our lead hero is Jim, a guy who has just lost his fiancee while they were on the run from the chaos. He barricades himself in a barn, where he spends his time in sorrow and anxiety until he receives a call from a nearby warehouse. He goes there and meets another three survivors - Scott, his wife Julie, and a mysterious newcomer Ix, who refuses to talk to anyone (that's a girl, by the way).

Two most important things here are the following: 1) For an infection movie, this one has a rather small body count. Surprisingly small, in fact. Actually, it's so small that the fact they managed to get away with it is a small miracle. Turner Clay has concentrated more on the lead characters and their relationships and while that normally makes me puke, he succeeds against all odds because the characters are likeable, they don't spend every damn second fighting about some stupid crap (like in most low-budget films) and the actors did a very good job, all of them. Of course, the writing isn't always top notch, with lines like

"I lost my only friend."

"Maybe we can be friends."

I mean come on! REALLY???

Fortunately, this is probably the only moment that made me cringe, other than that the dialogues are OK.

2) This movie is much better directed than your run-of-the-mill zombie/infected film. So much better, in fact, that I'm eagerly awaiting Turner Clay's next movie about apocalypse. Instead of violence, he builds a nice atmosphere of isolation and hopelessness, which of course wouldn't have been worth crap if the characters weren't so believable. There are also some great scenes that would've made any great horror director proud. For example, check out the 15 minute mark, when Jim finds out that he had forgotten to lock the barn - suddenly his safe place becomes potentionally lethal. Suspense at its finest.

The ending leaves a lot of room for improvement, but despite that this is highly recommended for anyone who likes low budget horror films, especially of this type.

Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2011)

Directed by: Carles Torrens

Writer: Rodrigo Cortés

This is another found footage horror about a haunting, like Paranormal Activity. Fortunately, this one comes from Spain, and with Spanish horror you're usually in the safe hands. Apartment 143 follows a group of parapsychologists (or at least one parapsychologist and his ghost-hunting team) who try to solve a case of mysterious occurences in an apartment.

 

See, you can spot a difference right there. Instead of a haunted house, we have a much more claustrophobic setting of an apartment. This is by no means a disadvantage - Paranormal Activity and its sequels were never too good in space utilization, while in this movie all rooms serve a purpose. Anyway, our team of ghost hunters responds to a call from a distressed father, whose family (consisting of a five year old son and a teenage daughter) had been experiencing strange phenomena after the death of his wife.

 

Naturally, the investigators install their highly sofisticated equipment (including a bizarrely pixelated thingy whose purpose evades me) all around the apartment and start gathering scary footage, while at the same time the leader tries to pry out from the father the truth about his late wife, which might be the key to everything that's happening.

 

The story is simple, but it serves purpose - it gives enough material for a few plot twists to keep us interested. However, the real treat comes from the way the foreign entity (who- or whatever that might be) communicates with the characters. There's obviously that unavoidable mundane stuff like moving tables, turning pictures on the wall upside-down et cetera, but the real deal is that the thing apparently takes possession of the girl, making her a truly scary bitch in a few scenes. One of the first things the team records is a mysterious image of a woman in the room with the girl, so it's fairly obvious from the start that you won't watch an hour and a half of doors opening and closing by themselves and that you'll witness some more concrete scares.

 

This nice little film shows that the found footage formula is not entirely dead and still can be used to a good effect. It's so unfair that Paranormal Activity, which is inferior in every possible aspect, makes millions, but that's marketing for you.

 

Pandemic (2009)

Directed by: Jason Connery

Writer: Aaron Pope

 

This movie begins with a man riding a horse and then dying a horrible virus-like death. He didn't even live enough to see out the opening credits, which I imagine was very disappointing to him. Soon after that, a young veterinarian Sydney visits a farmer named Spenser, whose filly is suffering a horrible agony, as if something is eating her skin. Spenser mercifully kills her, but that's not nearly the end of it. Soon other similar deaths start to occur all around the small county of Diablo, New Mexico. It's not long before military arrives and quarantines everything, which is the moment you know crap hit the fan. But the truth is even more terrifying than it looks (insert The Twilight Zone melody).

 

First of all, what really sucked about this movie is that it's actually not horror, but a thriller. The infected people simply die, without turning into crazy bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures. The same goes for animals. Imagine if the authors were brave enough to turn this into a movie about zombie horses! One can only dream...

 

Anyway, what happens next is not a large scale apocalyptic pandemic scenario (despite the movie's title), but a rather low key story about two main characters trying to get to the bottom of the things. Was everything just an accident or is the truth even more terrifying? (insert The Twilight Zone theme again) Sydney is calm and rational, while Spenser is an (apparently) crazy conspiracy theorist who blames the Government for everything. Sydney doesn't take him seriously at the beginning, but when the military forces blatantly attack them on the road in the night, she has to at least consider his side of the story. The truth is of course more horrifying than any of us could have imagined.

 

If you visit the IMDb page for this movie, you will see a low grade and a flood of bad reviews, criticising the story, the direction and pretty much everything else. Now, you can't really argue much against it, this is certainly far from the best movie ever made, but I found it a decent time waster. The reason is probably that I'm a sucker for the conspiracy theories and I found the two leads not too disgusting. I also liked the ending, where (spoiler) it turns out that the truth was even more terrifying than a Japanese long-haired ghost (end of spoiler), and for that I even forgave the lack of zombies, or horror in general. But, the problem for the filmmakers is that not everyone is as tolerant as I am, so I think the low grade is probably because the movie didn't feature any zombie horses.