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.

Pandemic (2009)

Directed by: Jason Connery

Writer: Aaron Pope

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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!

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.

Ghost Machine (2009)

Directed by: Chris Hartwill

Writers: Sven Hughes, Malachi Smyth, Sven Hughes (original story)

To tell you the truth, my hearing isn't what it used to be and I watched this movie late at night, so I wasn't able to turn the volume up as much as it was required. The point I'm getting to is - I heard almost nothing of what the characters were saying at the beginning, so I had only a vague idea of who they were and where the story took place. Sure, they are some military types and it's some kind of abandoned prison, I gathered that much, but I missed the finer details.

 

I guess it wasn't that important anyway. The point is - we have some people in some abandoned prison (presumably) and they set up a rather cool setup for a military virtual reality simulation. Basically, in the simulator they run through the same rooms and corridors that exist in the real life, with the difference that in the simulation they have full military equipment, including weapons of choice. Neat!

 

The slight problem is - a scary female ghost has infiltrated the simulation and is killing people right and left. And it has that irritating super power ripped off from Freddy Kruger that anyone who dies in the simulation dies for real. It also seems to have a power to modify the scenery, erase a staircase here, add a wall there and similar. It seems that sometimes being a ghost rocks.

 

Fortunately, it's not one of those scary long-haired Japanese ghosts, otherwise I would've promptly stop watching. The ghost is well done and a bit scary, but it doesn't stare at you through the screen and the way it eliminates people is anything but ghostly - it uses chains and brings devastating damage to their physical bodies.

 

For what it is, Ghost Machine is a finely made film that keeps interest throughout, but there's hardly anything spectacular in it. For this kind of movie, to elevate above the average status, one ghost is not enough. Had the budget allowed it, they could have made a full scale ghost vs. military war, where the ghosts would use a Hellraiser-like arsenal of chains, hooks and similar stuff, while the army would respond with their ultrafancy futuristic weapons like plasma guns, BFG 9000, railguns et cetera. Oh well, maybe in the sequel... Overall, Ghost Machine is far from a must-see, but it's worth checking it out for its rather original idea.

Camel Spiders (2011)

Directed by: Jim Wynorski

Writers: J. Brad Wilke, Jim Wynorski

With a title like this, you might thing that Camel Spiders is a part of the recent animal cross breeding craze that gave us such masterpieces as Sharktopus and Piranhaconda (to be honest, I haven't seen any of them, but unfortunately I'm going to). Unfortunately, camel spiders are real animals that look just like regular spiders, except that they're bigger and more CGI-driven. Reality is so boring!

 

The movie in Middle East or some similar place where the American troops are fighting some unnamed enemy. Suddenly, the fight is over, because the enemies have all been eaten by Camel Spiders (!). Some of those sneaky bastards find a way to infiltrate the coffin of a deceased American soldier and they are transported to America, where they start to multiply and grow to a horrible size. Oh, yeah, they also kill.

 

Alas, this movie was doomed right from the beginning. The computer animated spiders look absolutely horrible and it would have been a show-stopper even if all other things worked perfectly (which they don't). Everything is so generic and sterile, the setting is ugly, the killings laughable, but the worst thing is that everyone is so serious - the actors really seem to believe the horrible lines they're given, not to mention that they try their best to look terrified by the unconvincing spiders, which would bring a truck load of unintentional laughter just if it all weren't so damn boring.

 

Jim Wynorski hadn't made a good movie in about 20 years and he doesn't seem to have the intention to start now. Even his softcore films are more bearable than this.