Ahí va el diablo (2012)

Directed by: Adrián García Bogliano

Writer: Adrián García Bogliano

The very first scene in this film has two lesbians banging the hell out of each other. You can hardly imagine a more promising start of a movie, but things get better. After they've finished (and had a boring conversation no one cares about anyway), one of them goes down the stairs to answer the door, only to be brutally killed by an extremely large guy who cuts off a few of her fingers in the process. Her girlfriend then comes down and hits the killer in the head with a heavy object, so he gets really pissed off and leaves. The dying girls murmurs something about "his eyes" before shuffling off this mortal coil. You may think there's hardly a more promising beginning to a movie than a lesbian sex followed by a murder, but it gets better.

The killer, still in a bit of a knockdown, manages to get to a nearby mountaintop, where he opens a sack out of which falls a myriad of severed fingers (!). Then he removes his clothes and proceeds with doing what suspiciously looks like a sexual intercourse. With the ground. Yep. A bit later, apparently on the same mountain, we find a nice little Mexican family with two young children. They spend some time there and then leave, but the kids (a boy and a girl, by the way) want to go back for some reason, so the parents let them go so they can have some hot sex in the car. The parents, not the kids, you sick bastards. The mother gives her daughter a wristwatch and warns her that they have to be back in an hour. Surely, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, as you might have imagined, the kids don't return (surprise, surprise!), the parents are pissed off at each other and some unpleasant family stuff comes to the surface etc. But lo and behold, the following day the kids are back, perfectly unharmed, their whereabouts and doings remaining a mystery. Which, by the way, is not very surprising, as absolutely no one bothered to, you know, ask them where they were. Anyway, long story short, the kids are apparently alright, but soon strange things start happening (details of which will remain undisclosed in this review), and that prompts the mother to think that there might be something wrong with the children. (Cheesy announcer mode on:) What she will discover is that the truth is more horrifying than anything she might have imagined (cheesy announcer mode off).

The screenplay of this film is rather uneven. On one hand, the parts with the (apparently children-related) strange phenomena leave a lot to be desired. We see absolutely nothing we haven't already seen in many ghost movies. Hardly anything interesting happens about that. On the other hand, the movie compensates for that in some rather unexpected places. For example, the parents discover the whereabouts of a guy whom they suspect might have sexually assaulted the kids and they decide to pay him a night visit. Suffice it to say that it ends in a pretty surprising way. 

The story is made on the anything-goes principle, many things are not well explained, some of them are downright illogical and in general it all doesn't make much of a sense. I'm certainly no logic Nazi and I thought a good mysterious atmosphere was more than enough compensation, but still many people will probably see this as a serious fault.

To me much bigger problem were the kids. It seems as if the director had never seen The Omen, otherwise he would have known how a scary kid looks like. These two are not a tiny bit scary, if anything they look more drugged than demon-possessed or something. Don't let that chase you away from the movie, though. With all its faults, Here Comes the Devil is a very nice movie whose atmosphere and occasional extreme weirdness fully compensate for certain shortcomings. Actually, I lied in the first paragraph. Lesbian sex is much better than murder, cutting off fingers and raping the ground.

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.

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!

Inara, the Jungle Girl (2012)

Directed by: Patrick Desmarattes

Writer: Patrick Desmarattes

This film opens with some idiot rambling incoherently on and on and on about something before some other guy mercifully shoots him down, and it all takes place in some kind of jungle. Then we have the opening credits where most of the names look as if taken straight from a porno movie. Cali Danger? Madison Kitten? Sam SEXTON? I mean what the hell? Basically, at this point you're probably already aware that you're in deep trouble, but if you still have some doubts (hopeless optimist, eh?), the following few minutes will effectively shoot them down.

 

First we have an emo song (played in entirety, like three or four minutes) which introduces our lead character Inara, who's the daughter of some soldier who died recently. During that crappy song she mourns him and at the same time brings a whole new meaning to the words "bad acting". Then she talks to her father's superior officer (I forgot what was his rank exactly) and that useless conversation is quickly followed by yet another "song" during which Inara gets wasted with alcohol and then gets in fight with some military assholes whom she easily beats because her father taught her how to fight and other cool stuff.

 

This is only the first 10-12 minutes. Long story short - she agrees to go on a mission to some remote island, hoping to find clues about her father's death. The purpose of the mission is to get some precious material from the jungle that's swarming with hostile natives. But lo and behold! - the plane crashes, Inara survives and is taken hostage by the natives, who happen to be an all-female tribe (!) Yippeeee! You won't believe what happens next - there's a female bonding, our heroine learns the badness of the ways of the white man, joins the female team, becomes their queen and they kick ass! Eat that, James Cameron!

 

Every single scene in this movie is a mini-torture in itself. The entire budget of approximately 12 dollars obviously went to the pockets of mega stars like Cali Danger and Madison Kitten, so there was nothing left for less important things like special effects, military uniforms, locations, things like that. I won't even go into the sheer beauty of the screenplay and those passionate dialogues that make your heart (and the content of your stomach) want to jump out. Or how our heroine bonded with the natives (it was something like this: "We hate you and we'll kill you... OK, we're bonded"). The fight scene at the end is the most unconvincing thing ever (it's less realistic than the scenes of total destruction from Roland Emmerich's 2012). Quite simply put - there's not a single thing in this movie that's not the worst ever.

 

The only way this could possibly have worked is if all females were naked all the time, which they aren't. The tribe members sport nice two part swimsuits that successfully bring pain and misery to any viewer. If you imagine the worst possible softcore film by Jim Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray and take out all the nudity, you'll end up with something that looks like Godfather when compared with this one. Patrick Desmarattes, I really have nothing against you, I know it's a wonderful thing to make a movie, but please don't make a career out of this.

Storage 24 (2012)

Directed by: Johannes Roberts

Writers: Noel Clarke (original idea and screenplay), Johannes Roberts (screenplay), Davie Fairbanks (screenplay), Marc Small (screenplay)

 

I really like it when a movie lives up to its title. This one promises us Storage 24 and boy do we get it! A whole truckload of Storage 24! In fact, the entire movie takes place... in STORAGE 24!.

 

Fortunately, there's a hideous alien monster that kills people in there, because, you see, a storage (24 or otherwise) in itself isn't a particularly interesting setting. Imagine this being a drama, where people just go around and talk and yell at each other and we have to wait all the way to the very end of the movie for someone to day of cancer... in a storage. I imagine that would really suck, even if the storage in question had been the infamous... Storage 24!

 

Apart from being faithful to its title and set in the Storage 24 (I would've felt really cheated if it had been Storage 23 or something), this was also a surprisingly cool movie. Generally, a low budget and a claustrophobic setting are a recipe for disaster, but Johannes Roberts turned out to be a pretty skilful director who managed to make it all work.

 

First of all, there are no crappy introductions - right at the beginning, the people in Storage 24 are startled by a loud noise, which upon further investigation turns out to be caused by a plane crash. One of the guys finds his car crashed by a plane engine and I thought at that moment that it would be really cool if he yelled something like "Donnie Darko, you son of a bitch!". Johannes Roberts obviously had different opinion, so he avoided this cheesy and nonsensical Donnie Darko reference.

 

The important thing about the crash (even more important than a squished car) is that it was a military plane that was carrying something really nasty. Our heroes soon find themselves locked in the Storage 24 (I don't really remember how that happened, I have this nasty habit of missing out on important details in movies) along with the mysterious content of the crashed plane. It's not a real surprise that said content is extremely hungry... and not a vegetarian.

 

The thing about that thing is that it's a very good looking thing. Don't get me wrong, it's not Cindy Crawford (hell, it's not even Keira Knightley!), in fact it's even uglier than most male members of the human population, but the design is great and worthy of a film with a much larger budget. Its mouth look slightly like Predator's and the body somewhat resembles a giant insect even though it walks on two feet and it likes eating people's faces with that hideous mouth of his.

 

So, anyway, it looks great, and there are plenty of scenes where you can see it in full glory. Low budget movies usually use that irritating monster POV during most of the killings and only show it at the end, but here it isn't like that. I imagine this was a wise production decision - save money on location and use it to make a decent looking monster. And it provides some nice bloody killings - for example, it was great when some older guy came to face the monster and tried to confuse it with his trash talk and the monster got pissed off and instantly ripped off half of his face.

 

The movie also avoids some usual clichés in the character department. Not only the black guy doesn't die first, he becomes the leading hero (!). We don't see this very often (we did in Creature two years ago, but that's about that). Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that the actor who plays that lead role was also a producer and one of the writers, but be that as it may, he's a very likeable character.

 

There's also some drama between the characters, which thankfully never gets overdone. The black guy has this blonde ex girlfriend who left him for unknown reasons and only later he finds out that she's been screwing his best friend for quite some time. That "best friend" is some white guy who looks OK at the beginning, but shows his true colours when crap hits the fan and turns into a major asshole. Luckily, all of these people (including another blonde and some other guys) are normal grown ups, so we don't have to put up with another brunette-blonde-stoner-black guy-geek formula that usually comes up when a film deals with younger people (teenagers or students).

 

Basically, these are the two main ingredients that make this movie not suck - the characters that resemble real life people and a well made monster. There's also some well placed humour scattered around, for example when the ugly Predator-like monster gets distracted by a toy puppy. Of course, this is not Alien or Halloween and you won't feel that kind of tension, but you will (probably) be entertained.

 

I also have to mention the ending, without spoiling it, of course. It's that usual twist ending that's certainly been seen before, but the way they did it here was quite... interesting. I certainly don't mind that kind of stuff, I immensely enjoyed the robot at the end of Feast 3, but some people will probably find it a bit out of place.

#HoldYourBreath (2012)

Directed by: Jared Cohn

Writers: Kenny Zinn (story), Geoff Meed

Somehow it happened that I watched another dreadful Asylum movie, I have absolutely no idea why. Perhaps I liked the poster, but I should have listened to the golden rule I'd already mentioned: DON'T watch The Asylum movies! Well, I asked for it...

 

Though I only planned to review two other Asylum movies, as I said in the review of Barely Legal, this one at least happens to be a landmark of some kind - it's apparently the first theatrical release by The Asylum!

 

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference - this movie does look slightly better than the others, but it's so aggressively stupid that it's just impossible to overlook. The story follows a standard group of young guys and girls looking for sex and finding death instead. This time, their doom comes in the form of a particularly nasty ghost of some murderer. There's this stupid urban legend that says you have to hold your breath when you're passing by a cemetery, otherwise you risk being possessed by all kinds of spirits. But - it only applies if you're in a car (!). If on foot, you're safe.

 

Of course, in every single movie of this type there's a stoner guy, and it's him who doesn't follow the rule (he's too busy inhaling) so he's the first one to get possessed. He manages to off a cop before the spirit passes on to another member of the group, the one that looks like a hybrid between Rafael Nadal and Christopher Reeve.

 

The only difference that this body switching creates is that most of the group members get a chance to kill someone. Otherwise, unless we count occasional red eyes (oooh, scary!), there are no body deformations of any kind.

 

Of course, The Asylum wouldn't live to their reputation if they weren't unable to completely mess up even the simplest slasher formula. Throughout its length, the movie fires a cannonade of stupidity at the viewer. First, there's the infamous "give me your cell phones and I will hide them in this glove compartment, that's about to become unreachable when we most need it" plot device. Then, there's a couple that goes to an abandoned insane asylum to have a "quick" hump, while the others immediately decide to follow them for some reason (not of a voyeuristic nature, unfortunately). So they are trying to find them and they're wandering through this huge abandoned building, and yet they never try calling them. Then, that Christopher Reeve - Rafael Nadal character, who happens to be the most irritating of the bunch, gets dared by some bimbo to sit in an old electric chair, which for some reason frightens him so much that he demands a blowjob in return. Dangerous Liaisons, eat your heart out! And to top it off, the movie ends with a ghost fight so ridiculous that you have to see it to believe (but please don't).

 

If there's anything redeeming here, it's a completely gratuitous sex scene and an unusual amount of eye violence - many murders for some reason include gouging out of an eye. However, the usual total lack of competence on the part of The Asylum directors and writers makes for a painful experience of a completely different kind than (but similar in intensity to) eye gouging out.

Community (2012)

Directed by: Jason Ford

Writer: Jason Ford

I don't even remember anymore why I decided to watch this - since there's no plot summary on IMDb, it must have been because of the cool poster. They say "don't judge a book by its cover", well I think that's a load of bollocks. For example, I bought what turned out to be one of my favourite albums of all time without having ever heard of the band, solely based on the brilliant cover art by Roger Dean (the album is Aura by Asia, if anyone cares). While Community doesn't quite reach that status among movies, I'm certainly glad I've seen it.

 

Fortunately, the official site of the production company does offer a brief plot summary, so I'll just paste it from there instead of bothering to explain it myself. Here it goes:

 

"The Draymen Estate has become an urban legend. Amongst the sinister stories of strange locals and brutal violence, people have gone missing there. Two student filmmakers visit the estate in the hope their documentary will land them a lucrative career. Within minutes they are introduced to a skinned dog in a shallow grave. They quickly discover that behind the awkward smiles, the adults appear to be on drugs whilst the children roam wildly, further proof that this estate is a breeding ground for the darker side of society. A society which is about to present the students with material of unimaginable horror, turning their final project into their darkest nightmare."

 

The way the writer/director Jason Ford translated this story to the screen is worthy of an applause. He doesn't hesitate to explicitly show violence when it's needed, but never ventures into the pointless torture porn territory. The atmosphere is great - all the time there's this creepy, unsettling feeling that something lurks in the darkness nearby and this is mainly thanks to the supporting characters, who are so convincing that it's almost disturbing. I don't know where Ford found these people and how many of them are professional actors, but the way they look... boy, that's something you've got to see. In most of the films when you have a bad guy who's supposed to be insane, you'll see him screaming, shouting, swearing or generally overacting to the point when you just want to slap him on the face and say "shut up, bitch!". But these people seem like they don't need to pretend they're insane at all - you can see the insanity on their very faces (this, of course, is not an insult to the actors, but a compliment to them and the director, I hope that much's obvious :-) )! While, in terms of mere distance, the Draymen Estate is just a short bus ride away from the civilized world, it's actually a completely different world - kind of like something from a Clive Barker story, just without monsters.

 

My favourite scene is when this guy stands in front of his house and starts twitching and growling like monster and it makes you think he's about to turn into a werewolf and then similar growling is heard from everywhere! And at the same time, the two main characters are somewhere nearby, with no means of escape. I won't tell you what exactly causes the insanity in adults and children alike, but suffice it to say that the members of the community are very fond of weed and they have a rather original way of fertilizing it.

 

While the first half of the movie is almost a pure perfection, I'm afraid I can't say the same about the rest. It seems as if Jason Ford had revealed all his cards at the beginning and didn't have a clear picture of what to do next. There are some plot "twists" that are downright predictable and the story drags in a few places. Of course, I have to stress out that the movie is never boring and that even the weaker second half is much better than most recent horror movies. So, you'd do yourself a great favour if you ignored the surprisingly low IMDb rating and checked out this cool film. And I'm adding Jason Ford to the list of people whose future projects I'll definitely check out.

Black Rock (2012)

Directed by: Katie Aselton

Writers: Mark Duplass (screenplay), Katie Aselton (story)

Oh, well, here's one that's not so bad, but you won't really miss much if you skip it. It's all been done before, and it's been done better.

 

The story is as simple as they get - three girls (two of which can't stand each other because one of them screwed the other's boyfriend a few years earlier) go to some deserted island to have some fun (not that kind of fun, you sick bastard!) and perhaps rekindle some childhood memories, I don't really know. Don't blame me, I watched this from my laptop and the sound was crappy and I could hardly understand a word they were saying.

 

Not that it all matters much - what's more important is that three guys unexpectedly appear and you pretty much know what will happen. One of the girls (played by the director herself) gets drunk and starts seducing one of the guys, but when they get to a solitary place in the woods, she changes her mind and the guy is understandably less than happy, so he, as any real man would do, starts to force his way in. Abby (that's the name of the girl) is understandably less than happy about this turn of events, so she, as any real woman would do, hits him in the head with a large rock, causing him to abandon this cruel world rather prematurely (well, that's the word his mother would probably use, on the other hand most people wouldn't feel his death was a terrible blow to society).

 

When his two friends find out about this, they are understandably less than happy, and they, as all real friends would do, go for a revenge (meaning: the killing of all three girls). Our heroines are understandably less than happy about this and a desperate fight for survival ensues.

 

While the movie was generally well directed (I will leave out an obvious sexist joke here), especially when it comes to the treatment of the actual violence, which had an impact, but wasn't overly graphic, there were some problems that marred its potential. First of all, for the most part, the tension is ruined by the bad treatment of the villains. The main one doesn't look terribly smart, but at the same time he's horribly over the top, while his sidekick is too tame. So, the paradox is, even though some rather bad things happen to the girls, we never feel the bad guys are really much of a threat. Katie and her writing partner Mark Duplass should have drawn much more influence from classics like The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance.

 

The screenplay has its ups and downs, but to explain it in detail would mean to spoil most of the movie. Generally, I think the whole cheating story should have been left out (after all, the viewers don't need to know the real reasons of the animosity between the girls) and some dialogs could have been improved. There are also some really stupid decisions by the characters, the most problematic of which is the attempt to reach a boat by swimming through the cold water. But, on the other hand, I'm thankful for this, since it leads to a totally unexpected scene, which we will call the freezing scene. This is my favourite part of the movie, for all the wrong reasons, hehehee. Anyway, I would also prefer a higher body count, but that's just nitpicking really.

 

Overall, a solid fight-for-survival (TM) story, not exactly The Hills Have Eyes, but certainly worth a look. Especially the freezing scene :-)

The Sleeper (2012)

Directed by: Justin Russell

 

Writer: Justin Russell

 

 

 

 

Well, for a change here's a new slasher film that doesn't suck! This achievement is made even more spectacular by the mere fact that this is a direct rip-off of Black Christmas, the legendary movie that (almost) started it all (and it also happens to be one of my favourite movies). When you mess with a legend, you can easily get burned. Ask Glen Morgan for example - his official Black Christmas remake was stupid unwatchable crap. So, what did Justin Russell (the writer, director and pretty much everything else here) do to avoid the pitfalls that are usually the death of most of his colleagues?

The most important thing is that he tried his best to make this look like a real damn movie and not like some crappy home video. Most of the scenes are carefully set and there are some really nice establishing shots. The movie actually takes place in 1981 and I can only congratulate the director on the bravery of attempting to recreate the era in such a low budget movie. While he doesn't succeed completely (certainly not as Ti West did with The House of the Devil), you still get a refreshing feeling of something different - the clothes, the music, the interiors, etc. - it's all done very nicely, the only small problem is, as one IMDb reviewer has nicely observed, that the photography is a bit too polished for the time. But that's just a minor objection. One great consequence of this setting if that finally we get a break from listening to teenagers bitching about their cell phones not having a signal.

As I said, the movie heavily borrows from Bob Clark's Black Christmas without an ounce of shame. There's a sorority, there's a lot of girls, some boys, mysterious killer, scary telephone calls and everything else. There are many people here (some would say - too many), which is great for at least two reasons: 1) They don't have enough screen time to "develop" and become irritating, and 2) It's more victims for the killer! Seriously though, except for the two guys, pretty much no one was getting on my nerves too much.

The weak link here are the murder scenes. Russell has obviously studied the classic slashers well, which is evident by his building of the tension through the camera positions, the murderer POV, etc., but the murders themselves are either badly directed and edited, or they are ruined by bad special effects. For example, the first murder features a surprisingly explicit head violence scene - the killer raises a hammer above a completely unaware Jessica Cameron and where most other directors would make a cut and show a wall behind being sprayed with blood, Russell bravely decides to explicitly show how the hammer hits, and ultimately breaks, the poor victim's head. The problem is that the head model is horribly unconvincing which takes a lot from the effect of the scene. The same goes for the beheading scene later in the movie, where the severed head is shown, but again the model looks very bad. Nobody expected Tom Savini, but I'm sure there are people who could have done a better job with the same amount of money. And while I can only congratulate the director on showing almost all of the murders explicitly, the way those scenes are cut, the way the victims and the killer move, it's simply not convincing enough.

As I said above, due to the large number of characters, the body count is significantly higher than in most similar movies and killer is really entertaining with his prank calls and crying into the phone (?!) and similar weird things. Strangely, the killer's face is shown from the very beginning, yet we never learn who the hell he is. I actually like this, it adds a strange feeling of mystery.

The ending deliberately features every single horror cliché we have seen before: the victim runs, the killer walks; the killer is killed, but he isn't dead; the killer (previously extremely efficient) suddenly turns into a complete moron when faced with The Final Girl et cetera - all those things we loved in the old movies. There's also a completely gratuitous dance scene, the weirdest one since Calvaire, yet somehow strangely cool due to the great disco music.

All in all, I am very satisfied with this movie and I'll pay attention to Russell's further efforts. I'm already looking forward to seeing his Dead Stop Holocaust. He just has to pay some more attention to his murder scenes and he's good to go.

The Helpers (2012)

Directed by: Christopher B. Stokes

Writer: Christopher B. Stokes

Some young people are traveling from some place to some other place for whatever reason and they have a car accident in the middle of nowhere. They walk to a roadside motel nearby and it happens to be full of wonderful people who promptly arrange for the car to be fixed and in the meantime offer our friends tons of free drinks, food and shelter for the night, which none of them finds the least bit suspicious, of course. But here's the twist - in the morning some of our friends find themselves dead, while others are tied up and watched via surveillance cameras by some "mysterious" figure. Hey, what kind of a hospitality is that? What kind of people are they? What the heck are they doing? Well, they first help you and then they kill you because they are... The Helpers!

 

I hope you are back in your chair after no doubt having fallen to the floor in shock and amazement by such a daring and original concept. But fear not - you'll soon find yourself on familiar territory when it turns out that everything in this movie has been done thousands of times before. Fortunately, Chris Stokes and his partners in crime bring at least some amount of originality by sheer ineptitude with which they abuse the whole concept.

 

I won't go into too much detail, because this movie is simply not worth it, and besides, you already know what to expect - irritating generic characters played by horrible actors, antagonists that are only slightly less irritating than the victims, dumb plot "twists" (if it makes sense to talk about them in a movie that has no plot), no imagination in killings (for example, they rip off a famous scene from The Hitcher not only once, but twice!), stupid screaming blonde bitches, completely pointless video surveillance scenes, jerk with a camera, et cetera. What stands out is the overall stupidity of all characters, which pushes the boundaries even for this type of film.

 

For example, I've already mentioned the victims' lack of suspicion about the downright weird behavior of their hosts at the beginning. When they have a car accident at the beginning, they simply don't walk twenty meters back to investigate what could have caused it. At a late stage of the movie, a "savior" conveniently appears and some of the survivors readily trust him, even though they had previously seen him with the killers (!). Examples like this are too numerous to mention. Add to that the obscenely absurd and ridiculous backstory (explained thankfully at the ending, when most of the viewers are already sleeping) and you have one heck of a failure. Just don't think that it's so bad that it's good. No, it's so bad that it's bad.

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Directed by: See the review

Writers: See above

You've all watched numerous films that consist of three (sometimes four) stories, but sure as heck you haven't seen twenty six different stories in one movie before! Apparently, some producer, whose name I forgot, came up with a brilliant idea to make some kind of horror alphabet - for each letter of the alphabet one short story whose title is a single word beginning with that letter. Each story was done by a different director - they were given only the letter and the title and of course the story were entirely up to them.

 

Good thing about this concept is that stories follow one another so rapidly that the movie hardly ever gets boring. The bad thing - well, it's not the fault of the concept, but the fact is that today it's hard to find twenty six (or even six) good horror directors to fill the space. Of course, it's impossible to please everyone - I could bitch about the absence of Alexandre Aja, David Bruckner, Marcus Dunstan, Darren Lynn Bousman, Hideo Nakata etc., but on the other hand I have to be pleased with the presence of Yoshihiro Nishimura and Ti West (even though he failed miserably). Even if some of them were present, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have failed miserably like Ti West.

 

OK, anyway, on to the movie itself. I won't even try to describe each story separately (I've forgotten most of them, anyway), so just a few general remarks: The quality in general is below average and the lack of good ideas is horrifying. There are no vampires, werewolves, Japanese long haired scary ghosts (even though at least four or five directors are Japanese), or even ghosts of any kind, no decent (post)apocalyptic story (even though the first one is titled A is for Apocalypse) etc. What have we instead? Two stories are actually meta-movies about their directors' lack of inspiration, at least three of them heavily feature toilets, one is about farting (directed, not surprisingly, by Noboru Iguchi), one contains masturbation competition (this one is actually well done, but it's sick beyond words), one about (and titled) orgasm, many other aren't even horror and... you get the idea. If "toilet humor" is an appropriate term to describe most of today's comedies, then "toilet horror" is sure fighting for its place in our favorite genre.

 

The style and quality vary considerably, there are "normal" stories, some of them are animated, one contains stop motion animation, some (like O is for Orgasm) are so heavily stylized that it's hard to tell what the hell's going on, some feature traditional Japanese bloodbath insanity, but it's all at best watchable and hardly anything will make you go "Wow!", except...

 

... for better or worse, there is a story called D is for Dogfight, directed by Marcel Sarmiento (previously known for Deadgirl, which was an OK movie with an interesting idea, but not terribly spectacular), which is so above everything else story-wise and execution-wise that it's simply unbelievable. It's like putting Akira Kurosawa next to Kevin Smith. The story is about some guy, obviously a prisoner of some kind, who is forced to fight with a particularly vicious dog. Some nasty people are watching, placing bets, etc. So, the fight starts, the dog is biting the man, the man is hitting the dog, you know, standard stuff, and then... something clicks between the two of them and we have what's pretty damn close to a best ending ever. I was literally overwhelmed with joy and wanted to kiss Sarmiento (in a totally non-gay way, of course) on the forehead. Story aside, you simply won't believe how well this was made. Shot almost entirely in slow motion, it features probably the most realistic man-animal fight scenes ever, with close-ups of dogs teeth biting the man's flesh, but also of the dog's head being hit by the man, all of which will probably make you extremely uncomfortable for all the right reasons. Moreover, without a single spoken word, the story will make you feel sympathy for both the man and the dog, which makes the ending even more brilliant.

 

So, what's the problem? Well, the stories go in alphabetic order, so this one is the fourth from the beginning. That means that after something that's probably one of the best short movies ever made, something so seriously and professionally devised and executed, after that glimpse of brilliance you have to sit through twenty two mostly lame half-assed uninspired attempts. It would have been better if Sarmiento hadn't been there to remind us what the true greatness looks like.

The Lords of Salem (2012)

Directed by: Rob Zombie

Writer: Rob Zombie

 

In this new movie, Rob Zombie (temporarily?) abandons his favorite subject (serial killers) and goes boldly into the uncharted (for him, at least) territory of supernatural horror. Just a few quick introductory words before we get into this movie: First of all, I don't consider Zombie a second coming in the horror genre or something. House of 1000 Corpses was a guilty pleasure, The Devil's Rejects was almost great until that stupid crappy ending ruined everything and Halloween was a piece of crap. I haven't even bothered to watch the sequel. However, one has to admit that he's not a completely talentless filmmaker and his films generally look good - it's quite refreshing when you see something that reminds you of a B-movie from the eighties, instead of some repulsive garbage made by a couple of teenagers with a $500 camcorder. In short - with all his flaws, Zombie is one of the people that stand out in today's less than impressive genre output.

 

Now, as I said, The Lords of Salem is Zombie's attempt to do something slightly different than usual. Instead of serial killers, we have Satanism, witches (real ones, unfortunately without brooms and pointy hats), disturbing visions, disturbing "music" causing disturbing events, black magic, et cetera. The plot couldn't be simpler - Heidi (played by Zombie's wife and his regular cast member Sheri Moon) is a radio DJ at a station is Salem (as we know from our history lesson, it's where all those witches were burned). She has some stupid show which she runs with two uninteresting friends and they interview people and stuff and everything's good until one day they receive a mysterious record by an unknown group called Lords of Salem (you might remember them from the title). They play it in the show and it's just some simple (but extremely disturbing) theme repeating over and over again. I can't exactly name the style since it's not the music I listen, could be industrial or something. From the moment the record is played in the show, Heidi starts having disturbing visions and it turns out that the record is somehow related to a centuries old curse that some of the witches put on some witch hunter who burned them for being witches.

 

This is not half bad a story, but Zombie is not very interested in plot development - his primary goal here is to abuse the opportunity to create, through Heidi's visions, some quite memorable moments of genuine wtfness which may not make much sense, but hey! - they're quit memorable. The Lords of Salem is completely and totally style-over-substance (or even style-without-substance), which can be seen as a (temporary?) return to the House of 1000 Corpses days, but Lords are much more extreme in this regard. I won't even try to describe the many visions that constitute the core of the movie - suffice it to say that Zombie freely draws influence from people like Ken Russell, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, maybe even Takashi Miike and some other even more extreme maniacs like Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura. If you like those filmmakers, you'll probably enjoy this insanity fest, if you can survive the slow beginning. The Lords of Salem is more of an extremely extended death metal music video than a movie, but I'm definitely not complaining. If you want movies to make sense, watch some family drama or something.

 

As usual, writing is Zombie's weaker point and the few scenes where the plot does "develop" are cheesy and unconvincing, but fortunately those are always quickly substituted with some hideous monster or someone getting their throat slit and everything's right again. Another very important thing - Sheri Moon gets naked! Finally! If you're still not convinced that this is Zombie's best work to date, you're hopeless.

Dracula di Dario Argento (2012)

Directed by: Dario Argento

Writers: Dario Argento, Antonio Tentori, Stefano Piani, Enrique Cerezo

 

 

The newest addition to the ever growing collection of adaptations of Dracula (which happens to be one of my favorite stories) comes from none other than Dario Argento, the great Italian master of horror (if you don’t believe me, check that he appears in the series Masters of Horror), whose last few movies haven’t exactly been met by great enthusiasm by the critics. In fact, most of them claim they were utter crap.

So, Argento decided to play it safe and to use the story that gives you at least a solid movie almost by default, unless you’re a total retard. He scooped up some five million dollars by selling his daughter’s nude photos on eBay and assembled an all-star cast including said daughter Asia as Lucy, Thomas Kretchmann as Dracula, Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing and bunch of other people I’ve never heard about. From the look of the movie, I’m guessing most of that money went to booze for Rutger Hauer. He sure looks drunk all the time, anyway.

The obvious budget constraints dictated some painful but necessary changes to the story – it all takes place in some forsaken craphole of a village called Pasburg or something. I don’t know where the hell is that supposed to be, it’s never explained. The characters’ names don’t help much, some of them (Miloš, Tanja, Zoran) sound like they came straight from Serbia, while the mayor's last name is Kislinger, which is probably German or Austrian. I guess Argento didn't care much about this, so I don't se why should we.

Anyway, as I said, it all takes place in that village, which is really boring and bad looking. There's no trace of Dracula's intention of going to London, because then they would have to reduce Rutger Hauer's vodka supplies and create something that at least resembles a big city, which was obviously out of the question. So the whole team – Harker, Mina and Van Helsing – move to this Pasburg, where they meet Dracula, Renfield and Lucy who already live there. Well, not exactly the whole team – budget constraints dictated that characters like Arthur Holmwood, Dr. Seward and Quincy Morris had to be written off.

The existing characters also suffered some changes. Lucy is now the mayor’s daughter, Renfield is a caretaker or something and likes to drive shovels through people’s heads and Harker is a simpleton who’s completely irrelevant to the story. At times he reminded me of Mozart’s wife from Amadeus for some reason. Basically it all boils down to the fact that Dracula has some kind of a deal with the rulers of the place that he can kill, but should not kill everyone, if at all possible. So one day he gets pissed off and kills everyone and then the local priest summons Van Helsing, who arrives straight from who knows where (it’s also never explained, I guess it wasn’t that important) and brings with him his vampire slaying equipment consisting of wooden stakes, crosses, bullets with garlic (bet you didn’t see that one coming!) and a truckload of finest Jack Daniel’s whisky.

His first task is to kill Lucy, who was in the meantime vampired by Dracula (at least they retained something from the book). After that, he goes for Dracula himself, after gathering from the priest the invaluable information concerning the fact that Dracula is eeeeeeeeeeviiiiiil did you hear me Van Helsing EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I won’t tell you how that ended, except for the fact that Mina manages to kill Dracula using Van Helsing’s pistol (while Dracula is busy repeatedly hitting Van Helsing’s liquor-hardened head) and thus releases herself from the control of that freak who wanted her to be the substitute for his late wife. That bastard, she was dead for like only two hundred years or something and he’s already trying to jump in bed with some bimbo from London (presumably, it’s also never explained where do Mina and Harker come from). Suits him fine!

Obviously, I wasn’t able to enjoy the 3D presentation of the film, so I can’t comment how that came out. For a Dracula movie, the photography is surprisingly bright (maybe exactly because of the 3D filming) and in combination with the set design (or lack thereof) at times reminds of a film by The Asylum. All the great scary scenes from the book are removed, but Argento has a few aces up his sleeve – there’s a sex scene in a haystack, Lucy is shown naked while being washed by Mina (unfortunately, she doesn’t return the favour, which is my biggest complaint to the movie), Dracula totally abuses his transformation powers so he turns into various things including a giant praying mantis (bet you didn’t see that one coming!), there’s plenty of gore (mostly courtesy of Dracula and his murderous rampage) which is done quite nicely and of course – there’s the fact that, probably for the first time in movie history, Van Helsing is played by a Dutch actor (!). For those who may be unaware, despite his suspiciously Jewish first name, Van Helsing is Dutch and Rutger Hauer does an amazing job of bringing this authenticity to the screen, with his blonde hair and stuff.

Overall, while this is movie is far from being a masterpiece like Nosferatu (by Murnau), Nosferatu (by Herzog) or Philip Saville’s TV version, it’s still a decent work that will keep you entertained for almost two hours. Too bad we didn’t get the scene of Mina and Lucy sharing a bath, that would at least five stars to the overall IMDb score.