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.

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.

 

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!

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.

Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Directed by: Richard Raaphorst

Writers: Chris W. Mitchell, Miguel Tejada-Flores, Richard Raaphorst (original idea)

At first I was very skeptical about this movie - at least 95% of found footage films are pure crap. This lasted until the first monster appeared, when I thought "Hey, actually this doesn't look so bad!". After that came a "Wow!" and then another one and another one and this lasted to the very end.

 

The story follows a group of Russian soldiers, who face some really horrifying Nazi monsters in Eastern Germany towards the end of the second world war. The ever decreasing group of (anti)heroes stumbles upon a secret Nazi lab, where they find the explanation for the monsters' existence. Of course, one of the soldiers carries a camera and records everything.

 

As usual, the film gains nothing from being made in found footage style. The atmosphere is not improved one bit, while at the same time it imposes severe limitations on the narrative. Found footage films generally suffer from the "let's film everything even though we're dying left and right" and this one is no exception. The excuses the characters make to keep filming get progressively stupid. At the same time, it appears that monsters never attempt to attack the person holding the camera.

 

I also didn't like the portrayal of the soldiers. The film seems almost decidedly anti-Russian, so there are no sympathetic characters here. Everyone's either a murderer or simply insane or generally doesn't give a damn about anything. The identification with the protagonists is absolutely essential for this type of film, and yet they fail over and over again. Given this fact, some plot twists that follow (related to the identity and secret plans of some of the group members) have minimal to no impact. It's also interesting that none of the group members are played by actual Russians, so you can imagine what their accents sound like.

 

Having said all this, the movie simply wipes out all this weak points with its complete and utter coolness. You simply won't believe what kind of screwed-up creatures you're about to see here. I won't even attempt to describe them, my English is not good enough, though I suspect much better writers than me would have problems with that. The picture on the poster gives you some idea. Then, there's almost no CGI here, everything is done with the good old make-up effects. All those insane monsters, streams of blood flowing around, piled-up dead bodies, dirty old secret labs, mutilations, it's all real (so to speak). With all its drawbacks regarding the story and screenplay, visually this is a stunning work and deserves to be seen on a screen as big as possible. Thumbs up!

Hell Baby (2013)

Directed by: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon

Writers: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon

Hell Baby may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I quite liked it. There's something about this absurd Dude, Where's My Car-type of humor that I find appealing. Of course, it's not as funny as, say, There's Something About Mary (or any part of Austin Powers), but it keeps a smile on your face (if you're the right audience) and, while it gets a bit nasty in one or two places, it never crosses the border of vulgar, for which I'm immensely grateful.

 

The story follows Jack and Vanessa, an expectant couple, that move into a house which happens to be haunted. What's worse, it turns out that what Vanessa is carrying is actually the spawn of Satan himself. Enter a whole bunch of silly characters and the fun begins. The plot isn't very important and there are no witty Tarantino-style dialogues or magnificent visual gags - the movie gets its humor solely from the silliness of the characters and their interactions. And it works!

 

For example, we know that the key to comedy is surprise. Not only the surprise of the viewer, but also of the characters in the movie. Rob Corddry, who plays the lead role, absolutely rules in this. I'm not familiar with his other work, but here he simply nailed it. Most of the film's funniness comes from him being surprised or uncomfortable in various bizarre situations, for example when his wife chases away a particularly scary dog by speaking in a demonic voice, or when he finds his wife's sister naked in the shower, or when he gets repeatedly electrocuted by the same lamp, or when an irritatingly friendly neighbor keeps popping up in their house... All of these are scenes that might work or fail miserably, solely depending on the comedic timing of the people in it, and his performance was perfect. The other characters were also interesting and played perfectly, especially the two idiot cops that keep harassing Jack for some reason.

 

The humor, as I mentioned before, is intentionally brute force and may not work for everyone. The writers (who also happen to play the priests) think that lines are "It is our duty to legally enforce that hug", "By the way, you have a very nice penis, Jack" and "Doctor, you can very clearly see the outline of your penis in those shorts" are tremendously funny, and for me they were - exactly because they are so "self-aware" and forced. By the way, I hasten to add, not all jokes in this movie are penis related.

 

So, proceed with caution - if you're a fan of silly comedies like those mentioned in the first paragraph, chances are you will like this one. Otherwise, stay the hell (baby) away.

 

 

 

Doghouse (2009)

Directed by: Jake West

Writer: Dan Schaffer

Danny Dyer, Noel Clarke and the rest of the team go to a remote village to have fun and drink their asses off, only to find the place almost completely deserted. Almost is the key word here, as they'll soon discover that while all the men are dead, the women are still there, albeit transformed into some kind of bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures.

 

Don't have to say much about this one, really. Despite the great cast and a very promising premise, the screenplay is seriously lacking in humor and memorable moments. One would expect a lot more politically incorrect jokes and crazy situations (like in Feast series). As it is, this one plays it rather safe from the beginning to the end, which makes for a pleasant watch (especially with a right group of male friends), but it's hardly awe-inspiring or memorable.

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.

V/H/S 2 (2013)

Directed by: See below

Writers:  See below

 

The first V/H/S movie was pretty much a disappointment, at least given the names of some of the people involved. However, due to its anthological nature, it never got really boring, so I can't say watching it was a waste of time. Something similar goes for the sequel, but the quality of the stories varies much more here. Since there are only four stories (compared to 26 in The ABCs of Death), we'll look into each one of them briefly:

TAPE 49
(Written and directed by Simon Barrett)

The one that connects them all. Some people get into some house (which might or might not be the one from the first V/H/S, I don't remember), find some tapes and watch them. At the same time, we are made aware that something sinister is happening in the house, leading to a "shocking" twist at the end. Boring.

PHASE I CLINICAL TRIALS
(Directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett)

A filthy rich guy (played by Adam Wingard himself) gets a supercool fancy eye-camera implant, which unfortunately makes him see dead people (Haley Joel Osment, eat your heart out). He spends most of the time running around completely terrified after a huge number of jump scares, which creates some pretty funny moments. Then he's visited by a girl who hears dead people. And then bad stuff happens. This one is told completely in the first person POV, has some nice humor in it, so I guess I'd call it not bad.

A RIDE IN THE PARK
(Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, written by Jamie Nash)

A guy goes for a nice bike ride in the park, only to fall victim to some zombies. He then wakes up as a zombie, forms a zombie party with some other guys and together they crash some child's birthday party. This one is also rather funny at times and it's interesting to see the events from a perspective of a zombie (the lead character has a camera on his helmet), however it drags in places and the birthday party chaos is not nearly as effective as it could have been.

SAFE HAVEN
(Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, story by Timo Tjahjanto)

By far the best story in the movie is also one of the most insane things I've seen in a long time. A film crew somewhere in Indonesia is making a documentary about a mysterious end-of-the-world sect, led by some obviously insane bastard. First they interview that insane bastard in a café or something, where he gives them a piece of his philosophy and then they persuade him to let them visit the place where his followers abide. Big mistake! After a somewhat slow intro, this quickly turns into a bloodbath of epic proportions, where randomly crazy stuff happens every few seconds. None of it makes much sense, but I guess the directors weren't exactly concerned about that - they wanted to give us a hilarious thrill ride, and boy did they succeed! This story was co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, the director of the mightily successful Raid, and I'm so glad he gave a shot at directing a horror. Let's hope he does a full feature one after Raid 2.

SLUMBER PARTY ALIEN ABDUCTION
(Directed by Jason Eisener, written by Jason Eisener and John Davies)

Some kids are playing pranks on each other and then they are attacked by aliens and everything goes to Hell. The stupidest and most boring story of them all, it consists solely of irritating kids screaming "Oh my God, did you see that, what is that, we're gonna die, woe are us!!!!!" and pointlessly running around trying to escape some equally boring aliens. I don't know why in the heck did they put this one at the end, to ruin the entire impression. Jason Eisener had previously made a great little short called Treevenge, which had a terrific idea and execution, which makes the complete lack of imagination in this one even more surprising. 

In 3 Tagen bist du tot 2 (2009)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Agnes Pluch, Andreas Prochaska

In 3 Tagen bist du tot was a completely generic Austrian slasher without a single trace of innovation over the already infinitely repeated formula. I was pretty confused when I heard about the sequel, wondering what could they possibly do to make it even less original than the first film (since, as we know, that's what sequels are for). For better or for worse, Andreas Prochaska decided to make a completely different film. While the first part was about a bunch of teenagers getting offed one by one by a mysterious killer, this one puts one single character in a situation heavily inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and similar films.

 

It's one year after the events of the first film and Nina, the heroine, tries to put the traumatic death of all her friends behind and lead a normal life. However, she receives a mysterious call for help from Mona (the only other survivor, it's the one that impaled herself in the first film, unfortunately without success). She promptly returns to her hometown and finds that Mona and her father have left home, which is now inhabited by some Chinese people. Continuing with her quest, Nina will find herself in an isolated hotel run by a family of weirdos and will have to use all her skills to survive.

 

The first part of the film plays like a pretty nice mystery, with director Andreas Prochaska taking things slowly and using the wonderful Austrian winter landscape to create some memorable shots and accentuate the lead character's isolation and crap like that. However, while this is by no means bad, whoever watched the first film will want to see some killings and it takes almost 70 minutes for the first person to bite the dust. Also, even outside of the subjective perspective of a bloodthirsty slasher fan, the first hour definitely contains some overlong scenes which serve no purpose.

 

Fortunately, things get better. Immediately after the breaking of the ice, people start dying left and right and killings are really gruesome and at times very explicit (shows that Prochaska has learned quite a few things between the two films). Heads are beaten to a pulp, eyes are gouged out and don't even get me started about male reproductive organs (!). Alas, the fun part ends all too soon.

 

While by no means a masterpiece, this is a satisfying movie which even made me think it would be cool if Andreas Prochaska made another horror. The things that lower the overall grade are the aforementioned first half, which is too slow, a scene of full frontal male nudity and a scene where Nina takes a hot bath - with her clothes on! Oh yeah, there's also this cop from the first part. He doesn't run over anyone here, but he's involved in the most unconvincing scene in the film - without getting into too much detail, his car is supposed to be stuck in the snow and it doesn't look bloody stuck at all.

In 3 Tagen bist du tot (2006)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Thomas Baum, Andreas Prochaska

 

In 3 Tagen bist du tot, or You Will Die A Horrible, Horrible Death In Three Days, You Mofo!!!11 Okay, I did improvise the translation a bit, but the essence is the same. The key part is that you're going to be dead in three days. Three, not seven. Eat that, Samara!

 

Unfortunately for the killer in this movie, he (or she) is a completely ordinary man (or woman) and lacks the cool superpowers like being able to come out of a TV screen and stuff. Oh, yeah, and the movie is crap, which might also be considered a problem in some circles.

 

The only thing that sets this Austrian slasher apart from the myriad of others is that it's, well, Austrian. If IMDb's to be trusted, it's the first one to come from this country that gave us, say, Adolf Hitler. Not that it brings much difference, anyway - the language is different but everything else you've seen millions of times. A group of friends start receiving scary messages! Gasp! They start dying! The horror! They desperately seek for a clue. A mystery! Could it perhaps be caused by something from their past??? Sure enough, after about an hour they finally remember something that should have been so damn obvious from the start (obvious to them I mean, not to the audience, because it's never mentioned in the movie prior to that point).

 

The story sucks, the characters are every bit artificial and annoying as their average American counterparts and even the killings leave a lot to be desired. Many of them are off screen, most of those that we do see are boring, so there are only two scenes that stand out. One is the only nice murder scene in the movie, that includes the neck of a victim and a broken edge of an aquarium. The other is an unintentionally hilarious moment where some stupid bitch tries to run away from the killer, falls off the balcony and impales herself. However, even the impact of that otherwise great scene is taken away by the fact that she survived that. Boring! Another scene that was cool and unintentionally funny is when this stupid cop hits a girl with his car. Unfortunately, the director failed to realize the huge comic potential in his story and decided to make a "serious" movie. A fail if there ever was one.

 

Amazingly, for some inexplicable reason, this thing has a sequel (!) and I'm forced to watch it by my OCD. On the other hand, if you value your time, skip this one.

Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers:  Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

The third part of the best trilogy in the world picks up right where the previous one left off. The survivors from the roof finally manage to get into the jail and they meet another charismatic hero who promptly takes the lead. Their troubles are far from over, however. However strong the monsters, there's always a way to hurt them. But there's no defense from two insane and sadistic screenwriters who take every single opportunity to bring pain and misery to the group.

 

Feast III again brings the spirit of the second part, meaning - more humor and even more gruesome deaths than in the first part, but far less star power and a weaker overall look, especially when it comes to monsters. Of course, when you are enjoying the heck out of it with your friends, you'll hardly pay attention to it.

 

This part brings some more "heroes", most prominently a young martial artist called Jean-Claude Seagal (I kid you not) who spends most of his screen time with the Bartender, which doesn't have a good effect on his health. Their scenes are hilarious, particularly the now legendary Rambo III scene. Other characters also bring their share of fun, but I won't describe any of it lest I spoil it for you. If you liked Feast 2, there's absolutely no way you won't like this one. To freshen things up a bit, apart from the monsters we loved in the first two parts, the survivors also run into some kind of zombies.

 

I have only two small objections here. First, the movie is too short. Barely over an hour for something this good, that's simply unacceptable. Second, a large part of the movie takes place in the sewers and it's very claustrophobic and poorly lit, so most of the time you have no idea what's going on, which takes all the fun out of people dying. Okay, it's not that bad, you get used to it quickly, but still the second part was much brighter and cleaner (in terms of visibility, not the content).

 

We finish the story of this amazing series with one of my favorite quotes ever:

"You only need legs to kick ass, baby boy!"

I tre volti della paura (1963)

Directed by: Mario Bava

Writers: Marcello Fondatto, Alberto Bevilacqua, Mario Bava

 

I tre volti della paura (also known as Black Sabbath) is a horror anthology consisting of three stories directed by Mario Bava and based on literary works of Chekhov, Maupassant and Tolstoy. At least that's what the intro claims, but the IMDb and Wikipedia tell us that these are Ivan (and not Anton) Chekhov and Alexey (and not Leo) Tolstoy and they don't mention Guy de Maupassant at all, so I decided to omit this information altogether and just mention the screenwriters. The stories are as follows:

 

First, Il telefono, in which a woman is terrorized by a series of disturbing telephone calls apparently made by her ex boyfriend who freshly got out of jail (it was her testimony that put him there) and wants revenge, but not before he telephone terrorizes her a bit. He makes various kinds of threats and the woman is out of her mind, so terrified in fact that she promptly calls the polic..., no, sorry, she actually calls another woman, her former friend or lover or something. She begs her to come and make her company, even though they had a falling out long time ago. Some not entirely unpredictable plot twists ensue, resulting in some people dying. While the story is rather well directed, the acting is a bit dated and the score mostly comprises unnecessarily cheerful jazz music which effectively ruins the potential of suspense at every possible step. Watchable, but hardly memorable, it certainly has nothing on classics like When a Stranger Calls and Black Christmas.

 

The second story is called I wurdulak and is the longest and probably the most boring of the three. It is reminiscent of the Hammer horror films and takes place in 19th century Russia, where a young hero encounters an unusual family in some spooky village. They advise him to get the hell away from there because there's an imminent danger of a wurdulak attack. Of course, if he did, that would be the end of the movie, so he falls in love with one of the girls and decides to stay. At the stroke of midnight, the head of the family, played by Boris Karloff, returns after a five days absence - he had previously gone out to kill some Turkish wurdulak. What is that thing, anyway? Essentially, it's an undead creature that combines some features of vampires and zombies. The most prominent characteristic of wurdulaks is that they drink blood of the persons they loved during lifetime. Boris Karloff acts rather strange upon his return, bringing up the suspicion that he might have been wurdulaked himself, but that doesn't prevent the family from letting him stay in the house. As the night progresses, the family members demonstrate progressively more serious lack of common sense, giving the chance to the wurdulak team to thrive at their expense. This story is nicely shot and features some fine locations and it could have been almost good had the wurdulaks been made more scary (or scary at all). Unfortunately, they are a bit boring. The hero shows a serious charisma deficiency and the love story is quite silly, just as the rest of the screenplay, which features some genuine what-the-hell moments. For example, when Karloff had left the house, he had said he would be back in five days. If he's late, he's turned into wurdulak and is not to be let into the house. But he arrives exactly five days later, so his sons are at a loss as what to do. I mean, come on!

 

The third story, La goccia d'acqua, is the one that sets everything right. It's about a young nurse who has to prepare a deceased medium for the funeral, so she goes to her big and spooky house. In the process, she steals an expensive-looking ring from her finger because she won't need it where she's going, right? Wrong! You have probably seen more than enough horror movies to know what happens when you steal from the dead. Strange things promptly start to happen and the poor woman (the living one) is slowly driven to madness. This is a shining example of a haunted house story done right, where spookiness oozes from every corner, the highlight being the dead old woman herself. She is scary and disturbing when you first see her just lying motionlessly on the bed. Imagine what happens later! Don't be deceived by the fact that the movie was made in 1963 - this damn thing is scary.

 

The intro and the outro of the movie feature Boris Karloff, who acts unnecessarily silly, which is in contrast with the dead serious tone of all three stories. Overall, it's a hit and miss, but the third story is a must-see.

Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

 

Feast II takes place right after the first part, in which, as we remember, a group of bar patrons was assaulted and pretty much wiped out by some disgusting monsters of unknown origin. To give a quick reminder, the only survivors were Honey Pie, who screwed the others by stealing the truck that was meant to be used as a means for escape, and the group who bravely fought the invaders throughout the night - Bozo, Tuffy and Hot Wheels. Unfortunately, we don't see those latter three in this sequel, so their destiny remains a mystery. Generally, Feast II is a bit short on stars, but that's perfectly OK, since deep characterization isn't exactly the point of the whole thing.

 

Biker Queen (Diane Ayala Goldner) arrives in the vicinity in the search for her sister Harley Mom. Unfortunately, we'll remember that she was earlier blown up by Bozo (Balthazar Getty), so the only part of her that Biker Queen discovers is a severed hand. Harley Mom was also played by Diane Goldner, but since she's John Gulager's wife, it would be a shame if she didn't appear again, so she got a new (but essentially the same) part. Instead of her sister, she discovers the Bartender, who also died in the first movie, but since it's Clu Gulager (John Gulager's father), it turns out he was only heavily wounded. He informs the Biker Queen about what happened to her sister, so she and her gang tie him up and they all set out for a small neighboring town of Smalltown so she can find Bozo and wreak horrible vengeance of him.

 

Smalltown is in the meantime completely devastated by the monsters and there are only a handful of survivors. By chance, the gang runs into none other than Honey Pie, so it's the Bartender who gets the first opportunity for revenge. He immediately starts beating the hell out of her and he bites her ear off. Then the gang shoots some other people and are finally united with the other survivors, who are an even more colourful bunch than the one from the previous film. They include Slasher, a used cars salesman and one of the most entertaining characters in the series, Secrets, his cheating wife, Greg Swank (her lover, played by Tom Gulager, John Gulager's brother), Thunder and Lightning, the midget wrestlers and the owners of the local key shop, their grandmother and some other minor characters. Throughout the movie, the group tries to reach the only safe place in town and that's the jail. However, they can't reach it because of the monsters, and besides an old drunk has locked himself in and won't let anyone inside.

 

Feast II is certainly an acquired distaste (I almost said taste). While the first part wasn't exactly shy about gross outs, the sequel takes things to a whole new level by introducing such beauties and monster raping a cat, a dissection scene with monster fluids of various kind flowing everywhere, another child being explicitly eaten, a dwarf cut in half whining about his penis being cut off, a decomposing elderly lady and the infamous catapult scene which I won't spoil, but it's certainly one of the most insane and disturbing things you've seen in your life, and yet at the same time so hilarious that you'll spend almost the whole time rolling on the floor with laughter and hating yourself at the same time because there's nothing funny about it. Yeah, right!

 

The best thing about Feast II is the complete disregard for human existence. While there was some teamwork in the first part, here it's almost nonexistent. Slasher is perfectly happy to throw Greg to the monsters, not as a means of escape, but simply for revenge. Greg at first tries to save an infant trapped in a car, but then he throws it in the air and runs off while monsters eat the baby. At the end of the "successful" test of the catapult (resulting in the death of the midget grandma), Slasher sings and dances. The whole group simply throws an injured biker girl to the monsters, et cetera. This is precisely the reason why people who should know better dismiss it as being "poorly written", "having undeveloped characters", "not being scary" and similar crap, completely missing the point of the whole thing.

 

And the point is to be entertained while watching people suffer and dying. Well, not exactly "people", the characters here are one-dimensional caricatures, and that's the way we love it. They are not likable and we are not supposed to feel any kind of connection to any of them or to root for them. They are simply there to die and amuse us. And their deaths are unpredictable and almost without exception hilariously funny. Some are the result of the work of the monsters, some happen by pure accidents and sloppiness and there's also a handful of scenes of people killing other people. It doesn't make sense to talk about "leading" and "supporting" characters in the traditional sense because literally anyone could be dead at any minute. This whole series is notorious for its violence and monster bodily fluids, but for me it's this total disrespect for our fellow man (both by the writers and the characters in the film) that makes it so unique. This could have been made with far less explicit violence, maybe even without the monsters, and it would still retain its charm.

 

Sloppy Seconds is not as claustrophobic as the first movie. While the main theme is similar (some people locked in some place, fending off the monsters), it has more locations and more outdoor scenes, which is a welcome change.

 

If you are lucky and still haven't seen this film (provided that you love horror and comedy and are a bit crazy), do yourself a favor and assemble a group of equally bloodthirsty friends and enjoy like you've never enjoyed before.

 

A few words about the DVD. Unlike the previous one, this one is seriously lacking in extra material. The subtitles are missing again, and there are only a two short featurettes - the 10 minute making of, which is quite informative and entertaining, but obviously rather short, and the five minute "Meet the Gulagers", which is a nice look at the way the three generations of Gulagers appear in the movie. John is the director, his father Clu, wife Diana and brother Tom play some of the "lead" roles (put in quotes because of... just read one of the earlier paragraphs, dammit!) and the baby that meets an unfortunate demise at the hands of that bastard Greg is none other than Tom Gulager's infant son. So it all gives quite a funny perspective on some of the events - like Diana Goldner beating her father-in-law, or Tom Gulager throwing his own son to the monsters.

 

Feast II and Feast III were shot back-to-back and in fact pretty much constitute one movie, which was split into two simply for the running time. So, unlike the first part, this one ends more abruptly than the Lord of the Rings movies. Since it's in essence just one movie, everything I said for the second part also goes for the third part, so I hope its review won't be this long and boring. Over and out.