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.



Jug Face (2013)

Directed by: Chad Crawford Kinkle

Writer: Chad Crawford Kinkle

 

Here's a nice little movie that brings a breath of fresh air, both with its story and the execution, both of which are miles beyond what we usually see today, at least when low-budget horror films are concerned.

 

Jug Face takes place in a deranged redneck community that worships something called The Pit - which is actually a pit (!). Generally, every now and then the Pit wants the blood of some specific community member, who is then promptly slaughtered above it. The identity of the future victim is revealed by the Pit to the local potter (in a dream or something), who then makes a jug with said person's face. Then the face is revealed to the public and the joyful slaughter ritual may begin. The lead heroine is a young girl who for some reason isn't terribly happy about being slaughtered, so she steals the jug with her face and hides it. Naturally, the Pit isn't exactly delighted with this turn of events and chaos ensues.

 

The most important thing is that this film actually looks quite good. The interesting backwoods locations are well utilized by people who actually know how to frame a shot and handle a camera, so we actually have a bit of that good old 1980s B-movie feeling that's sadly absent from most of today's low budget films because they are all unwatchable crap made with cheap crappy equipment by talentless losers. The story also packs a few punches. The very first scene has the lead character being screwed by her own brother. As the time passes and we learn more and more about the Pit, we also get a better understanding of the rather sick nature of the relationships in the community. Except for the heroine, who is actually half-sane, there's hardly a normal person here. However, all this weirdness never turns into shock for the sake of shock - throughout the entire film I always had a feeling that the writer/director respects the audience and wants just to tell them a story and not torture them.

 

Unfortunately, towards the end the film does lose some of its impact and it appears as if the director didn't have a clear idea of how to finish the story. There are also some cheesy apparitions I could live without. But generally, I liked the story and how the Pit was a real evil entity that demanded sacrifice and not just some fantasy made up by the insane villagers (they are insane, but for other reasons). One of the producers was Lucky McKee, who probably liked that weird backwoods feeling of the movie. All in all, this is a refreshing little film that's well worth a watch.

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.

Cheerleader Camp (1988)

Directed by: John Quinn

Writers: David Lee Fein, R.L. O'Keefe

From David Fein and R.L. O'Keefe, the brilliant minds that brought us... well, nothing, comes this extraordinary tale of, you wouldn't guess it in a million years, a cheerleader camp (!) Admittedly, a story about the place where cheerleaders train for their cheerleading might've been a little boring without being spiced up with a bit of something extra, like for example a murderous maniac on a rampage, or steamy lesbian orgies, or (preferably) both. Well, orgies are unfortunately out, but a maniac is there, so there's at least one good thing about those cheerleaders - they die.

 

The story takes place in, brace yourselves, a cheerleader camp (!) somewhere in the woods. I have no idea what that place is supposed to be and how it works, since the sound was too bad for me to understand most of the dialogue, not that I feel a terrible loss about that. Apparently, some cheerleaders are there either to learn to cheerlead, or to have some kind of cheerleading competition, so there's an expected large collection of cheap bimbos, in addition to which we also have some equally useless male characters, like a fat prankster bastard with a camera, an inept sheriff, the lead heroine's stupid annoying horny boyfriend etc. The least bad moments in the movie were the deaths of these losers.

After the first few bodies are found, they are considered suicides, so the party doesn't stop. We wouldn't want a few minor deaths get in the way of the cheerleading, would we? This means that the characters continue to ignore the killer's presence, giving him the opportunity to increase the score (i.e. body count) without much effort, but it also means that the murders are not shown. Unfortunately, this lack of explicit violence continues deep into the film and poses a serious problem for the movie's integrity. Instead, the director chose to torture us with the lead character's nightmares, which are repetitive, boring and serve absolutely no purpose, except as a setup for the final plot twist, which is simply "meh".

The opening credits look as if freshly stolen from a John Carpenter movie, unfortunately, all similarities end there. This is not Halloween, and the lack of violence (and orgies) is not in any way compensated by tension, uneasiness or anything similar. Boredom is the dominating feeling and the movie is saved from being completely unwatchable only by the two wonderful leads, played by Betsy Russell (Saw III, IV, and so on) and Lucinda Dickey (who played one of the lead roles in Ninja III: The Domination, even though I haven't mentioned it in the review of that movie). Seeing those two beautiful ladies warmed my heart and made all the crap (which comprises pretty much everything else in the movie) almost bearable, but it's still not enough to recommend anything but avoiding this title.

Det okända. (2000)

Directed by: Michael Hjorth

Writers: Michael Hjorth, Tomas Tivermark

 

Det okända. (complete with a dot in the title) is some kind of a Swedish answer to The Blair Witch Project, and of course it’s completely inferior to it in every possible way. Throughout the rest of this babbling, if I ever need to refer to the title, I will use the English version (The Unknown), because that dot is pissing me off.

Anyway, the story here is actually not bad and draws its inspiration primarily from films like (Invasion of the) Body Snatchers and The Thing. Five biologists are investigating the effects of a large forest fire or something similar, somewhere at the north of Sweden, far away from any civilization. They encounter a strangely disfigured carcass, take it to their camp for analysis and then of course crap starts to happen. First one of the girls gets sick and starts acting progressively stranger and whatever the hell causes it starts to spread to the other members of the team and you can pretty much guess where it goes from there.

The Blair Witch Project’s influence is, apart from the fact that for some reason all the characters share names with their respective actors, mainly in the visual domain. First, there’s that burned (burnt?) forest that’s creepy almost by definition, and the style of filmmaking which worked so well in BWP, but causes nothing but skin irritation here. Strictly speaking, The Unknown is not a found footage film (because, to begin with, there wasn’t any footage to be found). The events aren’t filmed by any of the characters in the movie, but that surely doesn’t prevent the director to win the Golden Asshole award for the most remarkable achievement in the handheld camera abuse. It goes without saying that it’s constantly flying all over the place, whether it’s justified by the context or not, and most often it’s NOT (think of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, multiply it by ten... million, to the power of infinity, and you might start to get a slight idea how it all looks).

Okay, honestly, it’s not something we haven’t seen many times before, but what made me want to kill that director bastard is the fact that that damn camera, in all its frantic moving, conspicuously avoids to show anything even remotely interesting! Some really cool stuff happens here – there are bizarre disfigured carcasses, there are alien parasites in people’s throats, there are some animals killing each other etc. etc. but we never see any of that! Just when the camera starts panning down and you think you’ll FINALLY see something – boom! – it suddenly goes straight up and films the treetops and the wonderful blue sky while we have some loser describe the proceedings for us. Well, thanks for nothing, bitches! Imagine you watch Cloverfield and they never show the monster and instead you see only the characters talking like “Hey, there’s a really huge and nasty monster mofo in front of us! It’s so scary! If only you could see it! You would really be TERRIFIED! Gee, I haven’t seen such a scary monster since John Carpenter’s The Thing! Did I mention how scary this monster is?” Well, it’s something like that. This should have been called Det Infodump instead.

Add to this that the characters are extremely irritating and that they’re constantly throwing in our faces their private stuff which I’m sure nobody gives a rat’s ass about. Who cares if that blonde was with Tomas for a few weeks before she met Jacob? Who really gives a crap??? I mean REALLY?!?!? Well, I certainly don’t! Instead of that stupid high-school drama queen crap, I’d prefer to see some nasty body horror, but nooooooo sir, not here. Fail.